23 May 2005

Mis-aimed Muslin Rage


Mis-aimed Muslin Rage
Originally uploaded by thebrant.
Stray Voltage's first graphic! A great cartoon from Ariail, at The State newspaper in Columbia, SC.

17 May 2005

A good look at the Koran outrage

USS Neverdock: "Where was Newsweek and the rest of main stream media when The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity tore up Bibles for toilet paper?Where's the outrage? Where's the indignation? Why is the world media so hell bent on portraying Islam as some kind of sacrosanct religion, better and above the rest? Is their book somehow holier than everybody else's? Not bloody likely!"



OK, so he's a little hysterical here, but the point is still valid: why's everyone pissed about desecrating the Koran, but not the Bible? Especially when one was substantiated, and one was not.

16 May 2005

an interesting take on the iraqi "insurgency"

Power Line: What Does Zarqawi Want?



So what do we have to do to "win" the "insurgency"?



It reads like a pretty grim picture...

But at least it gives you a defnition of success.

13 May 2005

Another BRAC moment (pretty much written as I watched the NBC news story)

I was just watching NBC where the mayor of Portsmouth was whining about the closure of the submarine base. She was chanting "he must help us, he must help us, for God's sake, he's from around here."
Gee, I thought he was some good-ol'-boy from down-home Texas, not some pampered daddy's-boy from an uptight rich New England family...

And for all the hyperbole about Groton and the Navy submarine base, they are not the only sub training facility in the country, since San Diego still has SUBTRAFAC.
And I'm sorry if you've tied your entire town to the local military base and never tried to diversify your local economy. The Navy didn't "betray" you as Mr O'Connor claimed. There's no room for "tradition" or "history" when it doesn't make military sense to keep the base.
And if you've been on the hit list before, and survived, and still didn't overhaul your local economy? Well dammit, you're just stupid enough to have the base pulled out from under you.

Hey Olympia: 1 word, 4 letters, starts with "W" and ends with "H"

CNN.com - Lawmakers scramble to save bases - May 13, 2005: "U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, called the recommendation a 'travesty and a strategic blunder of epic proportions on the part of the Defense Department.'"

'Cuz we all know how that Olympia-freakin'-Snowe knows more about national defense strategy than, say, Donald Rumsfeld, or, oh, Anthony Principi. The closure of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is a "travesty and a strategic blunder of epic proportions" in the context of her re-election, not the defense of our country.

12 May 2005

Non-proliferation

Allies refuse to get tough on nuke builders: So why haven't China and the EU said these things? "Like that girl with the brussels sprouts," Mandelbaum said, "the Chinese and the Europeans are all for combating nuclear proliferation - just not enough actually to do something about it."




The article is deadly serious and yet still brings a smile to your face.