Al Maviva examines how much weight a soldier can actually carry.
Archives for February 2006
New Immigration Rules
How did I miss this story:
Former ‘Playboy’ playmate and Argentine bombshell Dorismar was rounded up by immigration authorities and deported with her husband on January 5 after living illegally in Miami for five years.
But the playmate is not taking the deportation lying down. So – to speak.
The striking brunette is fighting back citing her ‘extraordinary derrière’ as reason enough to allow her to remain in the states.
That’s right, Dorismar has a great butt, and her attorney is prepared to argue that is reason enough for her return to Miami.
I did some research. She does indeed have a great butt.
Plame Update
Kos points to this Murray Waass piece:
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
According to sources with firsthand knowledge, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald
This could get interesting.
Never Knew Him
I’ve largely passed on the Abramoff story since Jack’s decision to turn state’s evidence because for now, anyway, nothing is really happening. We’re stuck in the period after the witness has begun to cooperate but before we know where exactly the prosecution is headed. This might be one of the most entertaining games of musical chairs in history, with the White House on the run and the press desperate for excuses to call this scandal ‘bipartisan,’ but that’s all it is.
The political impact, of course, is enormous. People care about this story. The question of corruption resonates enough that Republicans and Democrats have fallen over each other to get out competing proposals to clean up DC, although it turns out that Republicans were just kidding about theirs. Two politicians in particular are looking at the sharp end of the public’s wrath over corruption in DC: Rick Santorum, whose dimming reelection prospects have forced him into an increasingly comical position of denying any knowledge his own K Street Project, and of course Tom DeLay. Not to be unfair to Santorum, I feel obligated to point out, via Carpetbagger, that DeLay also isn’t above denying the obvious.
A letter to Republicans in DeLay’s district, yesterday:
“A final word on Jack Abramoff: the notion that he was a close friend who wielded influence over me is absolutely untrue,” DeLay wrote. “As Whip and Majority Leader, I met with many people who brought issues before Congress and sought support of both Republicans and Democrats.”
DeLay added: “The reality is, Jack Abramoff and I were not close personal friends. I met with him only occasionally, in fact less frequently than numerous others who brought issues before Congress — never did he receive preferential treatment.”
Tom DeLay in 1997:
“When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made,”
Nice try, Tom. You don’t cure gangrene by washing your hands.
Quick. Someone Find Howard Dean
And make sure he is sitting down when he reads this:
John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one of two Americans who have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Last year, Democrats and a few Republicans refused to confirm Bolton to the U.N. post, forcing President Bush to resort to a recess appointment.
Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman were formally nominated by Sweden’s former deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark, for playing a major role in exposing Iran’s secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.
Heads are going to explode.
The Pushback Begins
Jim Henley, while ending the non-controversy about the supposed touchdown that was not called at the end of the first half in the Super Bowl, notes this Gene Wojciechowski contribution to the ‘counter-revolution’:
And finally, can we stuff a very large sani-sock into the mouth of Seattle coach Mike Holmgren, and anyone else who says the refs had it out for the poor, little Seahawks?
The signs are very clever (Refs 21, Seahawks 10 … or, Pittsburgh’s 12th Man: The Refs), but they’re bogus. It’s how sore losers rationalize a final score. Worse yet, it’s crying. And there’s no crying in football, unless you’re Hines Ward.
***Enough already with the whining. The Seahawks had their chances. Plenty of them to overcome the Steelers and, if they insist, the refs, too.
Holmgren, who didn’t exactly distinguish himself in the waning minutes of both halves, is no doubt suffering some post-Super Bowl anger. Perfectly understandable, especially in front of the thousands who greeted the team upon its return to Seattle. But days, weeks, months from now, when he’s able to think more clearly, he’ll realize the only people to blame for the loss were wearing Seahawks metallic blue, not black and white.
Gene isn’t the only ones, as others join the pushback:
Seattle, once associated with coffee, should be better known now for the kind of fine whine derivative of sour grapes. You thought the Seahawks and their fans were beaten pretty soundly in the Super Bowl? They have been far bigger losers since.
Will you people shut up already?
A couple of debatable penalty flags fall the wrong way and you’re going to start wincing and weeping and limping around on that lame crutch?
Aside to Team Mocha Latte: Your Seahawks lost, 21-10, for lots of reasons primarily summarized in the technical phrase, “played lousy.” You know how Steelers fans swarmed Detroit by about a 10-1 margin over Seattle fans? That mirrored the Seahawks’ shrunken team effort on the big stage.
There was no shame in losing the game. There has been much shame since.
The Seahawks and their fans (and I really do feel their fan’s pain) now risk becoming not only the Super Bowl XL losers, but being labeled as a bunch of whining losers. And that really is a shame, because I think despite their mistakes, theyshowed the entire world that they were a much better team than anyone gave them credit for being.
Meanwhile, on the other coast, the Steelers had their victory parade yesterday, and these were sent to me by a family friend:
Mike Logan (L), Mrs. Cowher, Bill Cowher.
Charlie Batch and Big Ben.
Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward.
Pro-Bowl bound Troy Polamalu and his hair.
And while this isn’t from the rally, my favorite picture:
My favorite player, big man Casey Hampton (HOW AWESOME WAS HIS SACK!), hoisting the Lombardi Trophy with Mr. Rooney.
I have decided I am retiring my Hampton jersey and framing it with pictures and mementos from the season all around the borders. I don’t know whose jersey I will wear next year. I am torn between Faneca and Heath Miller.
*** Update ***
BTW- One of the things that is helping to fuel this whining about the refs is the Steelers fault. They were too good during the previous three AFC football games, and everyone thought they were going to come out and do it again. So when the Seahawks turned out to be a much better team than people expected, and the Steelers came out jittery and pretty awful on offense, and people add that to the two blown calls and the other judgement calls, they act like the Seahawks were cheated. They weren’t. The Steelers just beat them, and other than Skip Bayless and a few other people (and Skip Bayless is such a Steeler hater that he thinks Jerome Bettis, fifth on the all time rushing list, a six time pro bowler, and Super Bowl Champion, still does not belong in the Hall of Fame), most experts agree that the better team won. So let’s cut the crap.
Neanderthal Nincompoop Nailed At NASA
We haven’t yet reached the point in the NASA story arc (more here, here, here and here) where the Deathmobile, representing science, triumphantly emerges from under the cake and crushes everything in its path. Doubtless that day will come, but in the meantime we can all have the pleasure of watching NASA flack and erstwhile B/C2004 campaign operative George Deutsch make the sad transition from a government player to a pejorative term conflating hubris, theocratic idiocy, ideology-driven patronage hiring and (late bonus) forged credentials. (login mrbig/mrbig):
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch’s resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
As a fittting testimony to this weird new world of distributed journalism, the story was broken by blogger and recent A&M grad Nick Anthis. Kudos to the NYT for giving credit where credit is due.
Recall that Deutsch went a bit further than merely labeling the Big Bang a ‘theory.’
The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”
Bye, George, you won’t be missed.