Unfortunately they don’t spend their time on silliness involving curses and burying gold. But you do have to wonder how they can steal a ship full of weapons. It didn’t any guards? Not enough guards, at any rate.
I wonder if the US actually has the right kind of naval capacity to prevent piracy? I don’t doubt the capability could be brought around in relatively short order if needed, but piracy suddenly proliferated like looting in a city without power, who would stop the pirates?
Felix Salmon is no fan of Bush. But this is what he said…
I was right about what Bush was going to say, but I was wrong about how he said it. This was one of the best speeches of his presidency, if not the best. I was watching in a noisy bar, and got the gist — but more importantly I got the body language. He wasn’t panicked, and he wasn’t angry, and he wasn’t telling us that we really had to Act Now Or Else. He was calm, and surprisingly coherent, and he took first-person responsibility for the bailout, and he explained the urgency without sounding like he was reacting in a knee-jerk manner.
Put it this way: if Chris Dodd has been a surprise to me over the past week, Bush tonight was a revelation. It was like he was a completely different politician from the one I’ve gotten used to for the past eight years.
Was not planing on watching it, but now I may have to check it out.
Aluminum powder has long been used to boost the power of explosives. Blast weapons like the 15,000-pound BLU-82 Daisy Cutter and the 21,600-pound “Mother of All Bombs” use it to increase their destructive force.
Devices with a high proportion of metal powder to explosive are termed “thermobaric.” When the explosive goes off, the metal powder at the leading edge of the fireball burns as it contacts the air. With a crude device, the powder simply burns and adds to the fireball. In more advanced weapons, the burning metal produces a sub-sonic shockwave (known as deflagration); the most advanced produce a detonation (supersonic shockwave) of tremendous destructive power. I noted the potential risk from terrorist thermobaric devices back in 2004.
While we have been primarily focused on the problems in the US we have been ignoring things that have been going on around the world.
Here is a list of some of the things we have been ignoring.
The fact that the giant Large Hadron Collider broke down the first time they tried to use it.
The contaminated milk scandal in China.
The huge truck bomb that went off in Islamabad.
Thabo Mbeki is resigning under pressure from the fans of Jacob Zuma. Mbeki has his problems, but Zuma is a thug.
Ehud Olmert is finally leaving office. In the short term he is being succeeded by Tzipi Livni who’s claim to fame is that she used to be Mossad agent.
NASA is going to have a press conference on the Sun. Seems that solar winds are at a 50 year low in addition to the fact that there have been few solar flares.
If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to issue minimum-wage checks to 200,000 state workers in less than a month, he may want to rehire any semi-retired computer programmers he terminated last week.
The massive pay cut would exhaust the state’s antiquated payroll system, which is built on a Vietnam-era computer language so outdated that many college students don’t even bother to learn it anymore.
Democratic state Controller John Chiang said Monday it would take at least six months to reconfigure the state’s payroll system to issue blanket checks at the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour, though Schwarzenegger insists such a change should occur this month.
I have to wonder if this is really true or not. Part of me thinks that if Mr. Chiang really wanted to obey the Governor’s order, he could find a way. Then again, I know enough about how IT works on the state level to think that maybe he is telling the truth.
As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”
Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”
Read the whole thing. They sound really scared. People who are really scared do stupid things.
When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”
“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”
Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.
From the Bayou Renaissance Man…..
In that street there’s an elderly couple in a small cottage. Their neighbors on either side evacuated North, but this couple have ridden out Heaven knows how many storms together, and decided they’d stay put. After Gustav blew through, they got together with some other, equally elderly folks nearby to form a temporary ad-hoc watch group, just as we did. They include veterans from the Second World War and Korean War. (Vietnam vets and those from later conflicts are regarded with tolerant affection as “youngsters”.) So far their tally is up to seven looters and/or scumbags and/or wannabe “contractors” and/or others nailed on general suspicion, as in “Ya sure don’t look like ya belong around here, boy!” (The term “boy” is generic – anyone younger than 60 [including yours truly] qualifies, irrespective of race, creed, etc.)
(Hint to wannabe looters: “ghetto”-style gangbanger clothing isn’t normally encountered on our streets – or not for long, anyway!)
Grandpa’s leading the charge with his trusty Winchester .30-30, which dates back to 1923! It was his father’s before him. The blueing’s long since worn off, leaving only silvery metal behind, and the stock and fore-end are dinged and dented, but he’s maxed out his deer limit every year since Noah with that darn rifle. I’d hate to have him shooting at me with it! Grandma and the other ladies back up the good ol’ boys with copious amounts of coffee and soup. Grandma dishes it up hot and strong several times each night, kept company by her “old faithful” Stevens double-barrel 16ga. shotgun, also worn silver, and the victor of many contests with ducks and other feathered things.
(I asked her, just yesterday, “Why a 16ga.?” She informed me, with a gentle smile, that a 12ga. “wasn’t considered ladylike when I was growing up”, while a 20ga. wasn’t big enough for ducks. That made a 16ga. “just right for a lady.” Hey, who am I to argue?)
Perhaps you have heard this….
The Pakistani military has been given orders to “open fire” on US troops crossing the border from Afghanistan to attack Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens, the military’s spokesman said. The order comes one day after Pakistani troops reportedly fired on US helicopters as they attempted to cross the border in South Waziristan.
It sounds serious. But the US does not have to worry about any shots the Pakistanis might fire. It is all hot air. The Nation (A Pakistani newspaper that has been breathing fire over the US incursions) explains why….
The Pakistani military is unlikely to bring its heaviest air defence hardware to bear in any bid to deter such incursions. Already fairly weakly equipped, these forces must remain largely dedicated to defences focused on India. Given the terrain, Pakistan’s heavier air defence assets would also be difficult to bring to bear beyond very isolated point-defence roles. And given their short supply, the Pakistani military would likely be hesitant to put these defences at undo risk of being destroyed.
More dispersed efforts using gunfire (Pakistan does retain anti-aircraft artillery) and Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) would be problematic as well. Using this sort of defence effectively would require a comprehensive deployment along the border, something Pakistani forces probably do not have the bandwidth for at this time. Even if it did, this picket would still be very limited in capability given the limitations of both older MANPADS, anti-aircraft artillery and crude sensors in the rough terrain.
Though it could help with challenging the United States while maintaining deniability, the idea of dispersing MANPADS to proxies is also problematic. So much has been done since 9/11 to secure these stockpiles in places like Pakistan that even Islamabad might hesitate to do so – especially to third parties they do not control, since there would be the risk that MANPADS could be used to bring down a civilian airliner, and that Islamabad could be found out as the source of the weapon.
Instead, Pakistan could now be running combat air patrols with its F-16s over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) if there is any truth at all to the news report. Pakistan has yet to secure a deal with the United States to buy new Block 50/52 F-16s, so its patrols are being run by F-16s still operating with the AN/APG-66 radar from the much older Block 15 configuration. They are not ideal, and they are certainly unable to hold up against US. and NATO patrols, but they are better positioned to spot inbound helicopters and ISR flights and give them a scare. In most cases (except when supporting troops already on the ground in Pakistan), the US abort criteria will likely generally be set low, since the United States is not interested in losing aircraft inside Pakistan.
But Islamabad is not interested in losing aircraft, either. Already facing a hostile US Congress over the delivery of the newer F-16s the Pakistani air force wants, Pakistan cannot risk losing the F-16s it does have. This is not simply because deteriorating relations with Washington have, in the past, cut off Islamabad’s F-16s from outside support, but because of a profound military disadvantage against India. New Delhi continues to field new Su-30MKI “Flankers,” which even the newer F-16s might have difficulty handling.
The article goes on to note that Pakistan’s only real lever is its control of the logistical route to Afghanistan that the Americans use. But the article fails to mention the fact that Pakistan is heavily dependent on US economic aid. In Pakistan’s current economic state, it could be destroyed as a nation by the removal of that aid.
So Pakistan leadership has every incentive to look the other way. The only problem is that popular opinion in Pakistan is at a boiling point. Most people in Pakistan don’t care if their economic order will collapse in the event that Americans pull their aid. They cannot tolerate the thought of Americans killing their country men no matter what the cost might be.
I think the Pakistani leadership is trying to bluff its way out of this problem. They are talking big about shooting Americans and yet they are doing nothing. It will be interesting to see how long they can keep this up.
We try to stay away from the presidential race, but this is just too much. How much lower can the political discourse go?
We were going to publish an essay from the Ape Man where he predicts the future. But it needs a lot more editing. If he can make it readable by tomorrow evening, we will edit this post and put it up here as essay of the week. If it is not ready, we will choose something else.
Edit: Ape Man could not produce on time so read this instead.