Most Important Traffic Sign Evah!

Austin Road Warning

Sign hacker broadcasts zombie warnings

Someone reprogrammed two city construction road signs near the University of Texas early Monday morning in an attempt to warn Austin of an imminent zombie attack.
Messages that typically alert Lamar Boulevard drivers to a detour for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard splashed several warnings like “Caution Zombies Ahead” and “Nazi Zombies Run”
As he drove south on Lamar, traffic controller Bruce Jones saw the first sign flash the Nazi zombies message at 6 a.m. and wheeled his truck around for another look. Then he said he noticed that the second sign, directed at northbound drivers, had also been tampered with.

Bonus Larceny – In Plain Sight

Just in case you don’t think that the “bailouts” are the biggest larcenies ever on American soil, check this out:

In the Financil Times,  Greg Farrell and Julie MacIntosh report  Merrill paid bonuses as losses mounted ahead of sale to BofA

Merrill Lynch took the unusual step of accelerating bonus payments by a month last year, doling out billions of dollars to employees just three days before the closing of its sale to Bank of America.

There’s really just no positive spin to be put on this and I don’t see – short of excusing the ruling class from criminal responsibility – how this is not prosecuted.

Merrill and BofA shareholders voted to approve the takeover on December 5. Three days later, Merrill’s compensation committee approved the bonuses, which were paid on December 29. In past years, Merrill had paid bonuses later – usually late January or early February, according to company officials.

So this was a “hurry up an steal” type of deal for them.

Despite the magnitude of the losses, Merrill had set aside $15bn for 2008 compensation, a sum that was only 6 per cent lower than the total in 2007, when the investment bank’s losses were smaller.

So, about 20% of all the money WE gave them went for bonuses. To a failing company. And not for business. IOW – STOLEN.

The bulk of $15bn in compensation was paid out as salary and benefits throughout the course of the year. A person familiar with the matter estimated that about $3bn to $4bn was paid out in bonuses in December.

Nancy Bush, an analyst with NAB Research, described the size of the 2008 Merrill bonus payments as “ridiculous”.

No – I think that should be “criminal”!

And so, once again, we watch as billions are transferred from the taxbase – from workers, not investors – to the failures, glitterati, and professional thieves that our political class is become.  There’s little other description that I can think of that applies to the lack of action or restraint that EITHER party or any of the legislators bring to this game.

The Rs were good at it, the Bushes excelled – making out very nicely with the first Savings & Loan debacle, but the Kennedy’s profit from year after year of entitlement politics fed by those that contribute to election funds. The Rs may have held the reins the last few years but the Ds were very darn eager to shovel money to these guys, nearly a trillion so far, with no oversight. Now set to confirm a serial tax cheat and insider as the next Treasury Secretary, the Obama administration falls into the same trap.

You want my support for another dime going anywhere that ain’t defense or infrastructure – put it on a spreadsheet and load it on the Internet.  Where the hell are all the GD fees these banks charge?  Where is the interest on our checking accounts going?  Why should we pay a single effin’ penny if every salary, office decoration, and expense is not put to the same scrutiny as the government.

Oh – and argh!

MyRightWingDad.net

This is pretty funny: MyRightWingDad.net collects up all those forwards you get about the librul crusade against freedom and god.  There’s no real debunking except some snark in the comments but it’s pretty obvious when you see this BS all in one place how legit it is.

Modernizing Backwardness

The New York Times reports that Benedict XVI, late the inquisitor or enforcer for , while modernizing outreach, finds a new constituency to appeal to:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI, reaching out to the far-right of the Roman Catholic Church, revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops on Saturday, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage.

Richard Williamson, one of the bishops, during a TV interview.

And while some of the church is busy paying their parishioners’ cash out to settle their criminal molestation claims, these guys have another little tick:

But while the revocation may heal one internal rift, it may also open a broader wound, alienating the church’s more liberal adherents and jeoparding 50 years of Vatican efforts to ease tensions with Jewish groups.

Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan.

Because we really need more holocaust deniers and 9-1-1 Truthers running about.

4ID Homecoming & the PGR

YouTube – 4ID Homecoming

ASBP Enters the 21st Century!

Something is afoot in Falls Church.  The ASBPO is setting up modern social media and networking accounts like facebook and MySpace.  Here is their twitter feed: Twitter / MilitaryBlood.

It might become something of a challenge to motivate  and update all of these consistently but the good people there are pretty creative and, if the idea is to create an engaged and enthusiastic community to encourage donating blood to the military, then I think they are making a great start.  More later, as my objective is way skewed on this one.

Noooooooooo

That was the sound I heard coming out of my mouth as President-elect Barack Obama spoke at the press conference for Vice-President Elect Biden and Senator Graham on their return from Iraq and Afghanistan.  After a wonderfully mature and smart set of comments by both Biden and Graham, leaving me feeling very impressed with the opportunities for unscrewing the world that is in front of us, Obama nearly quotes the last executive, saying (as quoted in the Fresno Bee):

“The recommendations that you’re going to be delivering to me are going to be of enormous help in making sure that we do what is my No. 1 task as president-elect and as president, and that is to keep the American people safe and to make sure that when we deploy our military, that we do so with a clear sense of mission and with strong support from the American people,” Obama said. (highlight is mine)

The number 1. task as president is NOT to be our daddy.  I had one of those and he’s gone. It is to:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

We’ve just had years of a government over-reaching and miscalculating, all in the (supposed) interest of “keeping us safe.”  That has brought our country to this point:  

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford is no “bleeding heart liberal” (not that there’s anything wrong with that):

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

But she is apparently being honest and now we are at this place:

“There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001,” Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. “He’s a muscle hijacker. . . . He’s a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don’t charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, ‘Let him go.’ “

This impacts on Soldiers in every way, from the honor of the country they are fighting for to the procedures used so far that have resulted only in lower enlisted troops being jailed for abusing prisoners while their leaders admit to committing crimes in public, with members of Congress complicit in the actions.  It is time for accountability and the restoration of both the value and the effective use of power that has made America great, not more “protecting the people” while destroying everything that make them the people in the first place.

Running Shoes

There’s a lot of news streaming in during this time of change and challenge and some might go under the wire. I think that a fateful exchange may have been captured by FOX news yesterday when they reported on a press conference held by the President-elects’ incoming Press Secretarty, Robert Gibbs.

“Thadeus of Lansing, Mich., asks, ‘Is the new administration going to get rid of the “don’t ask, don’t tell policy?’” said Gibbs, looking into the camera. “Thadeus, you don’t hear a politician give a one-word answer much. But it’s, ‘Yes.’”

The Obama transition team declined to elaborate on that one-word answer when asked by FOX News on Wednesday about a timetable for repealing the policy, which was enacted by Clinton after a protracted public debate. Obama officials also would not explain which lawmakers or Pentagon officials would attempt to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

After  all the kerfuffle died down I don’t think that making the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy meant much in the end. Not for Clinton or for the services, because it really didn’t change much, at least not more than the services were able to handle. 

A recent issue of Army Times surveyed their readers and about 10 – 14 percent of the respondents said that they’d consider getting out if DADT was overturned, leading some ideologues to worry about the force.  I think this is silly.  A retired colonel and I were talking at work yesterday about our basic training and early years in the service when you ran in boots and uniforms and did the five-event PT test.  I clearly remember the day when our platoon leader explained that we’d all have to get running shoes for PT.  The NCOs almost all rebelled because a) it would destroy discipline and fitness in the Army and b) no way that Soldiers were going to pay for running shoes!  Sounds a little silly now, eh?  Much like the arguments against integrating the Army sounded after the nation didn’t collapse, or how the arguments against sending female Soldiers to Iraq look. 

When this rule changes there will be some problems and good leaders will get over them. Outliers will change or depart. Somebody someplace will abuse whatever the new rule is in both directions and then be cited by the other side as proof of their point.  And effective units with effective leaders will address the issue, pick up, move on,  and succeed. 

It is time for the Armed Services to grow a little more again and recognize the people already serving and succeeding in units, barracks, and the field all over the place.  Get your running shoes on.  

Know Your Date

My first commercial

The Gates of Accountability

A tragedy on the Texas A&M campus got me thinking about the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates today.  He was the president of Texas A&M and has said that he loved it – the students seem to have loved him.  Today there was a Class-A accident on campus highlighting that even routine training for the military has its dangers: 

One person was killed when an Army ROTC helicopter crashed Monday on the Texas A&M University campus in an open field next to the dining hall used by the school’s Corps of Cadets, university reports said.

You can get updates, and I’d bet that Dr. Gates is, on the Texas A&M  Web site.

Whether one agrees with every single policy or action of Secretary Gates or not, most will agree that he has restored a level of adulthood to our national security structures that was sadly lacking for the six years before he reluctantly left the campus and stood to serve.    The Armed Forces Journal recognized that in this month’s journal with a (coveted?) “Laurel” on the back pages – Enduring SecDef:

It is testimony to Gates’ character and achievements over the past two years that regardless of who was elected president, Gates was rumored to be on the list of potential picks to run the Pentagon.

Gates writes a wonderfully even introduction of his new national security strategy in this quarter’s Foreign Affairs, stating

The military and civilian elements of the United States’ national security apparatus have responded unevenly and have grown increasingly out of balance.

He can bring stunning clarity from a perspective that few have:

It is true that the United States would be hard-pressed to fight a major conventional ground war elsewhere on short notice, but as I have asked before, where on earth would we do that?

And so all of that is good but I stray from my point. As pointed out in the Armed Forces Journal one of Gates’ biggest accomplishment was the accountability he brought to the hidebound defense structure, firing the Secretary of the Army, Surgeon General, and several top Air Force leaders.  That accountability brought results and a feeling of renewed pride and institutional competence to a lot of people in the defense structure.  Whether you were a private or a Navy Commander you could know that you worked for an organization with standards and accountability. Mr. Gates did that, and for that, he was asked to stay on by the incoming administration.

So my question is, why is that same administration seeming to not emulate him by demanding accountability for war crimes, felonies, and outright violations of the Constitution?  There was and is plenty of that to go around, with both the President and Vice President grabbing ever higher on the “I authorized torture” bat; information about the warrantless wiretapping program; illegal renditions, and more is in the public purview.  Soldiers are tried for crimes they commit every day in theater, sometimes under enemy contact, always under stress.  Some are found guilty. Some are found innocent. Some plea bargain. Some get very light sentences for crimes that might merit more punishment if they weren’t committed in the heat of Iraq, with the ever-present threat of attack, or after buddies have been killed.  The point is that the apprehension is made, the charges laid, and the process seen through fairly.  And if the system is not perfect it is a system and about as close to consistent as we are getting right now. 

Accountability is good enough for our troops. It has been recognized and rewarded in our Secretary of Defense.  Why is it not appropriate for others in the system?