Political endorsements are not usually worth much. By design they are vacuous attempts to pretend that this or that candidate truly is the ideal when anyone with half a brain knows that this is not the case. But Spengler’s political endorsement for president of the United States is sufficiently full of dry irony and considered real politic to be worth reading.
Game wardens have reputation for overstepping their authority. Here is one such story that is all too typical of what you will here in any rural area. Here is how the story ended. Sad to say, the ending is not all that typical.
Governments have a poor record when it comes to providing security. But if there is any area where the free market does a worse job then governments it is in the area of providing security. Any company with a profit motive is going to cut security to the lowest level possible. From The Washington Post….
Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.”
When he spoke to supervisors at his company, Wackenhut Corp., they told Beal to be a team player. When he alerted the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulators let the matter drop after the plant’s owner, Exelon, said it found no evidence of guards asleep on the job.
So Beal videotaped the sleeping guards. The tape, eventually given to WCBS, a CBS television affiliate in New York City, showed the armed workers snoozing against walls, slumped on tabletops or with eyes closed and heads bobbing.
The fallout of the broadcast is still being felt. Last month, Exelon, the country’s largest provider of nuclear power, fired Wackenhut, which had guarded each of its 10 nuclear plants. The NRC is reviewing its own oversight procedures, having failed to heed Beal’s warning. And Wackenhut says that the entire nuclear industry needs to rethink security if it hopes to meet the tougher standards the NRC has tried to impose since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Meanwhile, the Navy has recently taken out of service the last of its relatively new Osprey (MHC 51)-class coastal minehunters. These 12 ships-ideal for littoral operations-were commissioned between 1993 and 1999. The Navy began decommissioning them in June 2006. Some have been transferred to Greece and Egypt, with the remainder being kept in storage at Beaumont, Texas, until they can be disposed of.
Lee Hunt, vice president for academic affairs for the Mine Warfare Association, said that the departure of the last coastal minehunters robs the service of the ability to survey domestic harbors for mines. The threat of mines or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in U.S. harbors is of growing concern of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense.
Still another sign of the confusion and lack of interest with respect to mine countermeasures is the current Navy move to replace the large MH-53E Sea Dragon mine countermeasures helicopters with the smaller MH-60S Sea Hawk. The latter has considerably less endurance and equipment lift capacity than the MH-53E, and also lacks the big bird’s night-flying capability.
Pakistan is a tribal country that has a lot of guns. You have violent Islamic insurgency in that country that has killed a lot of people and fought the army to a standstill. You have a dictator running the country who has almost been killed several times. Some of those attempts on Musharraf’s life raise Click Here to continue reading.
This from The Canadian Press…
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. Her death stoked new chaos across the nuclear-armed nation, an important ally for the West in the war on terrorism.
Al Qaeda has taken credit but some people speculate that they had help from the Army.
Here is a you tube clip…..
I don’t know that this will have much long term impact on Pakistan, but you never know. Some people have more effect on history with their death then with their life.
Don’t be fooled by Russia apparent recent resurgence. In reality, the nation has no where to go but down. Consider how India and China are kicking Russia around. This from Strategy Page….
India and China are both playing rough with their largest arms supplier; Russia. China and India both have price disputes with Russia, and India is also upset that Russia is supplying China with RD93 jet engines for Chinese made fighters that are being sold to Pakistan. Both China and Russia are threatening to halt purchases if Russia does not back off on attempts to raise prices on contracts that have already been agreed to. China is playing a weak position here, because of a Western embargo on arms sales to China (because of China being a sometimes brutal police state and behaving badly by selling weapons to all manner of nasty people). India is in a stronger position, and is buying more and more weapons from Western suppliers. Currently, India is in the market for 126 top-line fighters. India has told Russia that if those RD93 equipped Chinese fighters keep going to Pakistan, Russia can forget about its chances of winning the competition (worth over $6 billion) for the 126 fighters.
How did it get to this?
Read the rest of the article.
Finally, on Oct. 1, a letter arrived. It was from Glendale’s Neighborhood Services administrator.
“Dear Owner,” it began. “The city of Glendale is committed to maintaining a community with quality streetscapes that include the care and well-being of protected indigenous trees.”
The letter informed them they had improperly pruned 13 trees, some of them on city property because they were near the street, and some on their own property. The fine was listed on Page 2, where the Collards were informed they would be charged “two times the value of the damaged tree(s).”
“Total: $347,600.”
“I about passed out,” says Ann.
She’d been worried they might get fined as much as, say, $3,000.
Read the whole story. Hat tip: On the level.
We don’t like Mark Steyn. But the fact that he is facing serious legal trouble in Canada because of something he wrote is just ridicules. It makes you think of what Solzhenitsyn said.
We have been avoiding posting Solzhenisyn’s Harvard Address because everyone has read it. Or at least, anyone who is likely to find it interesting has read it.
But by the same token, we knew that we would have to post it sooner or later. How can you not make one of the most famous essays of the last hundred years an essay of the week?