Collateral Damage

“I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed… It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.” — The Clueless One during a video conference with civilian & military personnel who are facing real danger in Afghanistan. At no time did he say, “Dang, I knew I should have gone to Vietnam.”

From The NY Daily News: CIVIL WAR REENACTMENT - IN BAGHDAD?

Where did they come up with this one? The Multi-National Corps-Iraq press desk sent out a release today about a new operation targeting insurgents in Baghdad, which succeeded killing two insurgents and locating a cache of “artillery rounds, mortars, cell phones, weapons, propaganda, ammunition magazines and other bomb-making materials.” The clever name of this mission? Operation Bull Run.

From CD in February 2006: The Iraq Civil War, or Operation Bull Run

Last Sunday, Secretary of State Rice made the TV rounds and dismissed an “impending” civil war. And, technically, she’s right: It’s not impending if it’s already here. Her comments sound like Gen. Westmoreland’s December 1967 dismissal of the North Vietnamese’s ability to launch an offensive anywhere in South Vietnam. The following month the North launched the Tet offensive everywhere in South Vietnam.

Two points for the Pentagon to keep in mind:

1. It was a JOKE.
2. There have been two previous battles of Bull Run. We lost ‘em both.

Y’know, Tom Lehrer once said that irony died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh Tom, if only you’d been right.

(Mad props to Flagrancy To Reason for finding this.)

From Wired: How to Take Money From Kids: Sell Toys Both Physical and Virtual

Webkinz kick-started a trend in children’s gaming that ties virtual environments to real-world merchandise. Online games for kids aren’t new. Sierra Online had tot-focused games in the early ’90s, and Neopets proved a hot product six years ago with a similar concept. But the unprecedented success of Webkinz is inspiring everyone from Barbie to Disney to get children invested in both the digital and the physical.

From TheWhatchamacallit: Neopets a neoscam?

The NC Mall was the final blow though. Needing to use real money, to buy virtual items on a kids site? It should not be! I am going to write a twelve paragraph letter to neopets on this subject, after seeing how few people actually realize neopets is being taken over!

From Reuters: Program Reveals Where Wikipedia Entrees Come From

A new tracing program that reveals where Wikipedia entries come from is stirring up controversy. People using FBI and CIA computers edited entries on such topics as the “Iraq war” and the prison at “Guantanamo Bay,” presenting a conflict of interest for the nonprofit online encyclopedia, according to a company spokesperson.

From today’s New York Times: Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits

Collateral Damage: See here & here.

Collateral Damage: Today’s sarcasm is tomorrow’s news.

clipped from www.boston.com “We are doing everything we can without jeopardizing the quality of the training to make it more efficient and compress it,” Colonel Joe Gallagher, chief of plans for the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, said in an interview earlier this month. “The whole intent is to get the soldier into the unit where he can be used faster. Time will tell if something is missing.”

This is spin talk for we are so short of warm bodies that we will do anything. Unfortunately the proof of whether something is missing is … horrible. This is far too reminiscent of what the military did in the late 60s/early 70s. And look how well that turned out.I take this a bit personally as these are the people who are going to be next to Staff Sgt. Big Brother Collateral Damage should he ever have to play another round in the George Bush Desert Classic.

Any senior officer who signed off on this should resign or face a court-martial.

And, by the way, congrats to Jenna Bush on her engagement. Since she’s not in the service. I assume her fiance is.

Remember: Army Strong is Army Dumb

In an interview on NPR Gen. David Petraeus showed that logic is not a required course at the Army War college:

Q: A simple question that many in America are now wrestling with: Who is the enemy and what is the U.S. fighting for?

A: The enemy is extremism, we think, and it is extremism that comes in various forms.

I forget, is it the infantry or the artillery who are trained in extreme combat?

Isn’t moderation the best weapon against extremism? But if you do it too well you run the risk of being extremely moderate.

If the enemy is extremism does this mean we’re about to attack the X Games?

Maybe we could attack marketers who use the word extreme when ever they want to appear “hip” and “down” with the kids these days?

I look forward to the Armed Forces blowing up statues of Sen. Barry Goldwater who famously said that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Isn’t going to war a very extreme act?

One definition of extremism is “any political theory favoring immoderate uncompromising policies.” Invade the vice president’s office immediately.

This reminds me of something George Bush the elder said during the first Iraq contretemps: “We are fighting to prove that might does not make right.”

The war on extremism makes the war on terror look good.

There is a new hazard at the George Bush Desert Classic

BASRA, Iraq (AFP) - The Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a new fear — a giant badger stalking the streets by night. Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts, but this has done nothing to dispel rumours of a bear-like monster that eats humans and was allegedly released into the area by British forces to spread panic.

Great now we face an additional threat from RUS.

Buttercup: What about RUS-es?
Wesley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t believe they exist.

Doesn’t Wesley already sound like he works for the administration? (Earlier in the movie he proves he isn’t aware that one of the classic blunders is getting involved in a land war in Asia.)

Remember: If we don’t fight the giant badgers in Basra, soon we will be fighting them here. This syllogism so favored by the Administration was also used during Vietnam. In Dispatches, Michael Herr has the perfect response: Well maybe we could beat them here.

BTW, if the headline doesn’t make sense CLICK HERE and prepare to laugh. A lot.

Habamus War Czar! Gen. Douglas Lute has been named caddy for the George Bush Desert Classic. Going out on a limb here but I don’t think Lute’s name will wind up in the history books next to George C. Marshall or Henry “Old Brains” Halleck — the best that he can hope for is that it doesn’t end up next to Custer’s. Why not take the job? There’s no real downside. The blame has already been laid. They must be rejoicing in Baghdad tonight.

President Bush took aim Wednesday at lavish salaries and bonuses for corporate executives, standing on Wall Street to issue a sharp warning for corporate boards to “step up to their responsibilities” and tie compensation packages to performance.

If this applied to government jobs he might be extra glad that they’re about to increase the minimum wage.

Nixon to China this ain’t.

Bush compares U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq. “Well, they were still shooting at each other when I got to Iraq, that’s one difference.”

Technorati Tags: Vietnam, China, Bush, Iraq, Irony, Penguins

AP: Bush back on campaign trail for GOP

Technorati Tags: Election, Dems, Democrats, George, Bush, GOP, Republican

"What the president has said all along is that he wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language." – Tony Snow, new White House Press guy on Friday.
"The president has never supported making English the national language." — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales later on Friday.

"The attorney general got caught in a linguistic snare. He took 'national' language to mean what we describe as 'official' language." –White House spokeswoman Dana Perino even later on Friday.

Remember, having a command of English should be a requirement to become a citizen but not to become president or attorney general. Irony hasn't had this much fun since Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Also on Friday, the Senate has voted to make English the nation's "common and unifying language." OK, all in favor of a rule stating that members of the Senate must be able to  write a simple declarative sentence, say AYE. That will work much better than term limits.

"The only man woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead." — HL Mencken on the death of Warren Harding.

"They will push cars," said the President, who has decided  the solution to any problem is to throw the Guard at it. Next up: He will deploy the Guard as head of the CIA. Following that the Guard will be deployed to solve the looming Social Security problem and then to deal with global warming.

George clearly believes just because he spent four years in the Guard doing nothing is no reason anyone else should.

Back in the early 1980s, when Gary Hart had a political future, the then-senator from Colorado actually said something memorable. Just after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon he said, "What is the president going to do for a foriegn policy when he runs out of Marines?" 

(And, really I promise to get around to Hillary's "kid's these days" speech/idiocy, but I am operating in what the Pentagon describes as a "target rich environment" and only have so much time in the day. I will say that I am not surprised by Mrs. C's shameless pandering, but I am very disappointed in McCain doing the same thing.) 

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. — Mencken

From a press release:

The President Is Doing Something About Gas Prices - Six Flags President Mark Shapiro, That Is

NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The President announced today a plan to do something to address record gasoline prices — Six Flags President Mark Shapiro, that is. This spring, he's giving the green light to a new discount promotion for everyone paying more at the pump.

Or maybe it's playing off the fact that we really don't expect the government to actually do anything about our problems. I report, you decide.

Headline of the day from Fark.com. No they don't mean the Titanic, either. The Hindenburg reference is from Steven Colbert's amazingly funny (if you weren't there) speech at the White House Correspondent's dinner. Read it here. I have been incredibly amused by the fallout from Mr. Colbert's comments. Read about them at MediaNews, or here and here and here and here and … well you get the idea. The basic theme of all the criticism is that the Official DC Press-erati got their bow ties in a knot because Mr. C had the temerity to make fun of his Bushness at the shindig. To which I can only respond: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? DO YOU WATCH HIS SHOW? This is not a development that should have caught the cream of US journalism (ha ha) by surprise.

And besides, hurrah for him. In the US, the press spends far too much time trying to be liked and far too little just doing their job. That dinner is just one more sign of the way that the press bigwigs suck up to power in DC. We're supposed to represent the least powerful, remember.

Hurrah! Washington has heard the call to battle and is taking up arms to protect us all from price gouging.

"Anyone who is trying to take advantage of this situation while American families are forced into making tough choices over whether to fill up their cars or severely cut back their budgets should be investigated and prosecuted," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, (R-Ill), and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, (R-Tenn), wrote in a letter to President Bush. Of course they only mean taking advantage monetarily, not politically.

What better way to protect us than with a mountain of useless paper? This explains why many, many different bills are winding their way through Congress to deal with this threat. The one just approved by the House would impose criminal penalties and fines of up to $150 million for energy companies unable to distinguish the difference between making money and making too much money.

This offensive against excessive profit continues the trend of declaring war on chimerical concepts that began with our efforts to curb “terror.” Don’t you miss the good old days when we only attacked nouns? The wars against cancer and poverty weren‘t any more successful than the current bunch but at least you knew what the hell we were trying to eradicate.

Just as no one can define terror, no one has any idea what price gouging is either. This fact is made plain in the GOP-sponsored House bill, which leaves it to the Federal Trade Commission “to develop a definition of price gouging.” You have to love a law that is so specific about the penalty and so vague about the crime.

It is imprecise because it has to be. Otherwise it would be totally laughable. Witness the efforts of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who has proposed a bill that would levy fines of up to $3 million on oil companies, refiners, distributors, or retailers found to be “taking unfair advantage of the circumstances to increase prices unreasonably” or imposing “excessively unconscionable price increases.” This suggests that oil companies and their ilk would have a legal defense as long as they could prove a price increase was either excessive or unconscionable but not both.

The Cantwell bill does offer some guidance on the issue, saying that gouging depends on whether the price charged amounts to “a gross disparity” from the usual price of oil and gasoline. However, it does not give any specific dollar or percentage increase to define what “a gross disparity” would be. Once again the dirty work is left to someone else, in this case that would be the judiciary. (I found out about Sen. Cantwell’s bill while reading a story on MSNBC with the misleading headline: What is price ‘gouging,’ and can it be stopped? It was misleading in that it answered neither question.)

Price gouging, on capitol hill at least, is not unlike the old definition of obscenity – I know it when I see it. Consider this quote by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich):

When we were doing the Energy Policy Act last fall, in the town of Midland, right by my district there, gas went up 90 cents in one day. Now, is that not gouging?

If you take a look at it, from September 2004 until September 2005, refineries have increased their prices 255 percent. Isn't that gouging?

I mean, I think we all know what gouging is. What we need is a federal standard so we can hold the oil companies' feet to the fire and make sure we know what factor goes into every gallon of gasoline, so at least the American public will have some transparency and get a fair shake on what goes into a price of a gallon of gasoline.

Well, that certainly clears things up. So if the folks in DC don’t know what price gouging is, does anyone else?

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer writes (in a column which makes repeated references to 9/11 – surprise, surprise) that

“New York State law prohibits price gouging during a state of emergency. The law specifically provides that, in order to prevent any party from taking unfair advantage of consumers during an abnormal disruption of the market, the charging of "unconscionably excessive" prices is prohibited.

New York’s law, like that of most other states, says that price gouging can only occur during a time designated as an emergency by the government. So it IS price gouging if a hurricane hits my state and you jack up the price of duct tape by 1000%, but it is not price gouging if you charge me $2 to conduct an electronic bank transaction that costs you $.002 as a part of normal business. Apparently no one has yet thought to make highway robbery illegal.

That is not just my opinion either. This is from Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's testimony to the Senate:

Traditional price gouging laws are not in effect during periods of “business as usual”. Rather, they only go into effect when the normal competitive checks and balances of the free market are disrupted by a disaster or other emergency. When a population is trapped and desperate for essential supplies, like food, water, shelter and gasoline, victims do not have the opportunity to shop around or wait to purchase essential products until the prices go down. Demand is steady regardless of the price, so unscrupulous businesses can and sometimes do take advantage of consumers.

Need a rule of thumb? Then just remember unscrupulous business practices during an emergency = BAD. But unscrupulous business practices under other circumstances = Good.

(Special note should be made of Louisiana's price gouging statute:

During a declared state of emergency, a merchant is prohibited from selling goods or services at values which exceed the prices normally charged for comparable goods and services in the same market area at or immediately before the time of the state of the emergency. Businesses may raise prices on items for which they incur additional costs, however, these price increases should not be excessive. Price gouging is a misdemeanor and can result in a $500 fine or six months in jail.

Well, if the threat of a $500 fine doesn’t keep Exxon in line what will?)

There are other definitions as well:

The sages at Princeton say it is “pricing above the market when no alternative retailer is available.” Which could be read to mean that any time you have a monopoly, you are a price gouger. So much for an Ivy League education.

My favorite definition is from a site called Neutral Source:

There is no objective definition. Economists–who specialize in price theory and the behavior of markets and can study these things ad nauseum–have no definition for it, either. In fact, economists have avoided the term as if it were a social disease. A review of all the microeconomics textbooks on Neutral Source's bookshelf reveals that none have as much as an index entry.

…Price gouging is defined by a buyer, generally after the fact, who is deeply unhappy that the price he willingly paid was much higher than the price he would have preferred to have paid. As the gap between actual and preferred prices rises, the buyer's sense of unfairness and anger towards the seller intensifies.

Equally good is one from a website called Truck and Barter, (which has the wonderful tag line "Where Sympathy and Hedonism Collide"):

Price gouging is the raising of prices 1) far above one's costs and far above competitors prices, 2) far above what many people think is just, 3) during a human crisis. I disagree with those that state that PG is a non-concept. It is an intentionally vague and deceptive, morally abstruse, and economically harmful concept, but for those very reasons, it must be taken seriously.

Or you could go with the words of some lunatic named Neil Boortz: "What is price gouging anyway? Just a buzzword used by the anti-capitalist, government-educated among us."

Yep, Bill Frist, George Bush and Denny Hastert – anti-capitalists. I’ll have some of what Mr. Boortz is drinking please.

Anti-capitalists Hastert and Frist have asked fellow Commie President Bush “to direct the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to investigate the rising oil prices.” Across the aisle, the Dems are also using the FTC as a whipping boy.

Quoth Rep. Stupak again: "See, when the president calls for an investigation by the FTC into the price of oil to see if there's gouging going on, it doesn't do us any good, because the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has never brought a case for price gouging on petroleum products ever."

One slight problem: One FTC official, though, told CNN that the trade commission can only look into anti-competitive practices and has no legal authority to investigate price gouging.

The GOP has also floated the idea of hitting the energy companies with a windfall profits tax which has got to be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Aren't windfall profits the Republican's raison d'etre? Next thing you know George Bush will be calling for abetter mileage on cars. Oh, wait …

One of these "price gouging" bills will inevitably pass through Congress' digestive tract and get placed in a steaming pile on the president's desk where it will promptly get signed. Why not? Our elected officials will be able to say they have done something without actually running the risk of doing anything. This law will never be enforced. If someone tries to it will be laughed out of court.

To really address this issue would require a long and critical look at how we choose to define capitalism or what the late Mr. Galbraith called the "free markets where nothing is free." But that hasn't happened since 1931.

There is one simple solution to the problem, but no one in this hemisphere has tried it. It’s called a Bolivian. But remember, simple does not mean good.

Like Gen. George McClellan, that other great American with the same last name, he was great on defense and looked a lot better before the campaign than he did after it. Hmmm, what's Ron Zeigler up to these days? Nope, dead. Or maybe we can bring back Larry Speakes — not because I thought he was so great or anything but I just loved reading "Speakes spoke" in the papers.