A bit of follow-up to yesterday's post. Several commenters suggested that Congressman Issa should get a pass on his retreat from the Sestak issue because he has bigger fish to fry.

Is this what you had in mind?

Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of the committeeÂ’s hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown.

The to-do list is: "1. Impact of regulation on job creation ... 2. Fannie/Freddie & the Foreclosure Crisis ... 3. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the failure to identify origins of the financial crisis ... 4. Combating corruption in Afghanistan ... 5. WikiLeaks ... 6. FDA/Food & Drug Safety."

Notable omissions: Sestak bribery probe. AG Holder and the voter intimidation case. The stimulus spending and mismanagement. Pigford II. The GM dealerships kerfuffle.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:37 AM | Comments (277)
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For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:00 AM | Comments (57)
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Now that the Romanian govt has declared witchcraft to be an official govt recognized "profession", its practicioners are going to have to pony up.

...The move, which went into effect Saturday, is part of the government's drive to crack down on widespread tax evasion in a country that is in recession.

In addition to witches, astrologists, embalmers, valets and driving instructors are now considered by labor law to be working real jobs, making it harder for them to avoid income tax...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:42 AM | Comments (33)
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Obama: The Golfing President

In just two years Obama has golfed more than Bush did in all his eight years in the White House. And I'm pretty sure that Bush could still beat him at the drop of a hat. Of course when a Republican golfs, it's a sign he's an out-of-touch, elitist fat cat. When a Democrats plays the game, well he's just taking a much needed break from the rigors of the office.

How To Build A Fusion Reactor in Your Own Home
Designs based on the Farnsworth Fusor really do work and aren't that hard to build. Unfortunately they are hard to scale up to make power generation with them feasible. And yes the fusor was invented by Philo T. Farnsworth, the man who also invented television.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:54 PM | Comments (547)
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The Captain of the USS Enterprise finds himself in hot water over some videos he made while serving as the ship's Executive Officer.

In one scene, two female Navy sailors stand in a shower stall aboard the aircraft carrier, pretending to wash each other. They joke about how they should get six minutes under the water instead of the mandated three.

In other skits, sailors parade in drag, use anti-gay slurs, and simulate masturbation and a rectal exam. Another scene implies that an officer is having sex in his stateroom with a donkey.

...At the beginning of the videos, Honors jokes that his bosses shouldn't be held responsible for them. "As usual, I want to say that the captain and the admiral - they don't know anything at all about the content of this video or the movie this evening, and they should absolutely not be held accountable in any judicial setting," he says.

As with anything, some people thought the videos were funny, others were offended. Some were offended enough to complain but according to Honors, never directly to him.

"Over the years I've gotten several complaints about inappropriate materials in these videos, never to me personally but, gutlessly, through other channels."

First an aside, some of the editing and video effects are fairly high end and Honors apparently conceived and wrote all of the videos. Where the hell did he get that much time?

As you might imagine, the Navy, as least the corporate, home office part of it is not pleased.

If Capt. Honors didn't think these video would eventually get out (video and the internet are forever, it's a dangerous combination) or that they wouldn't cause a fire storm when they did, he's got a some very serious blind spots. Of course his disclaimer that his bosses didn't know about the contents of the videos shows he must have had some idea about the line he was walking.

I'm not qualified to pass judgment on where these jokes fall within what's acceptable or not in the Navy. Every professional culture has its own lines about what is and what is not acceptable. They are not always clear to the outsider. Of course that won't stop reporters, other commentators and members of Congress from weighing in and likely calling for Capt. Honors' head.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter...Enterprise is about to deploy.

Enterprise just completed an extensive overhaul (she was commissioned in November 1961) that ran 45% over budget for a total of $650 million in order to get one, maybe two more deployments out of her.

The Enterprise Strike Group just finished its training for the upcoming deployment, which according to the first article linked, is scheduled to begin in "weeks".

What's the Navy going to do? Get into this in the days before deployment? Replace at the last minute the Captain who has trained the crew up for this deployment?

No matter the outcome, this is something men and women about to spend 6+ months away from home shouldn't have to deal with.

*I changed the headline and removed two references to the Enterprise's upcoming deployment being in support of operations in Afghanistan because I misread something and I'm not sure that's the case.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:44 AM | Comments (369)
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A group of surgeons are sitting around shooting the shit. The first remarks that he's rather fond of operating on accountants: "You open 'em up and everything is so helpfully numbered." The second notes that electricians ain't bad either, "It's all color-coded." But a third pipes up that he prefers politicians. "Y'see," he said, "you get 'em open and there's no brains, no guts, no heart, and no goddamn spine."

Congressman Issa, who beat the Sestak bribe drum for nigh on a year, has decided he's not really that interested anymore.

Asked directly if he will investigate the Sestak case, Issa said, "No, we're not."

"Once we knew, as we discovered, that it turns out that Republicans and previous administrations thought it was OK — in spite of the absolute black and white letter of the law — it got bigger, it got bigger than President Obama."

Reminder: it's not just possible, but probable that the President committed a felony by offering Sestak a job in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania primary. I walked through the applicable criminal statutes here. The White House stonewalled for months, eventually coming up with a bizarre job-offer-that-isn't-really-a-job-offer story that places Bill Clinton in the hot seat, rather than the President. Except, of course, for the part where the President authorized Clinton to make the offer.

But Congressman Spineless is now all wobbly. He says, and this is entirely contradictory, both that "It was wrong if it's done in the Bush administration; it's wrong in the Obama administration." but that he has no intention to investigate the Sestak case in particular.

I guess for Rep. Issa, two wrongs make it all right.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:05 AM | Comments (131)
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Happy Sunday you morons.

Also, CDR M reminded me to pimp the playoff thingy. Consider yourselves pimped. Password is "valurite".

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:34 AM | Comments (276)
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The hell? It's like the collective new year's resolution for everyone at the White House was to tell as many little white lies as possible. They're not major fabrications, just enough to spin a whole 'nother narrative. Just below I posted the lie by omission in Obama's statement about the attack on a Christian church in Egypt.

Here's something from last week, spotted by Byron York:

On "Meet the Press" December 26, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett said President Obama's "biggest regret" is that the severity of the economic crisis forced him to "spend almost every waking hour in Washington focusing very hard on solving that crisis" and thus kept him from traveling the country to connect with the American people. According to Jarrett, Obama recently told aides, "I really want to figure out a way where I can spend more time outside of Washington listening and learning and engaging the American people." Jarrett says that in 2011 the president's schedule will "reflect that priority" -- that is, include more time outside the nation's capital.

The claim that he spent "almost every waking hour in Washington" in lieu of traveling about the country is utter bullshit. Everything including the the as, ands, and buts is a lie. This is so far from the truth that you couldn't see truth with the Hubble space telescope from here.

The truth is that President Obama has spent almost half his presidency on the road and not in D.C.

As of January 2, Obama has been president for 712 days. According to figures compiled by CBS News reporter Mark Knoller, who serves as a sort of unofficial White House record-keeper, Obama has spent 339 of those days -- nearly 48 percent -- outside Washington.

According to Knoller, Obama has spent 176 days on domestic trips, 70 days on foreign travel, 58 days on vacation, and 35 days at Camp David. (You can add a couple more vacation days to the total before the president returns from his break in Hawaii.)

Keep in mind all this traveling took place when Obama wasn't even running for anything. Can you imagine how little time he'll spare for doing his actual job once campaign season really gets going?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:01 AM | Comments (161)
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Happy new year, Morons!

I have a few books under way right now, and more on my "to read" stack.

I just finished Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity. What's interesting to me is how the concepts of personal heroism, bravery, and sacrifice have changed since ancient times -- not so much among soldiers themselves, who are in most respects very much as they have always been, but among the civilians. The coin of personal heroism and bravery are very much debased these days. I suppose you can attribute at least some of this to the distance between most modern civilians and the battlefront; we no longer witness much violence at first-hand, and so come to devalue to skills involved in both inflicting it and defending against it. Technology also plays a part -- it's a far different thing to kill a man at a distance with a projectile weapon as opposed to up-close with an edged weapon or a spear.

I also finished Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music. This book is a fairly brief overview -- I wouldn't call it a history, exactly -- of some of the Delta bluesmen who created and advanced that specific style of blues. It's a good book, but it just reminds me all over again of how strange it is: a musical style created and performed almost exclusively by black musicians up until 1945 or so is now almost exclusively the province of white musicians. And blues have become "academized" in the post 1960's era, which means that earnest young men (again, almost exclusively white) write books about it and try to explain it. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (I am a white guy myself, after all), but I do find it...strange. About the only modern black bluesmen I can think of are fairly old guys: B. B. King, of course; and Buddy Guy; maybe Keb' Mo'. Blues is the main circuit-cable of American roots music: Jazz, Rock, and much country music spring from it. I guess you could argue that rap and hip-hop are modern extensions of the old "field hollers" and "blues groans" that were so much a part of the old blues, so maybe in that sense black musicians didn't really abandon the blues after all.

What is everyone else reading to kick off the new year?

Posted by: Monty at 06:41 AM | Comments (100)
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What is wrong with this man? Is his worldview so dependent on believing that Muslims are a victim class that he simply cannot help but create Muslim victims in an attack on Christians?

Yesterday morning at a midnight mass celebrating the new year, a car bomb exploded outside a Coptic Christian church in Egypt. There were 21 fatalities and 79 injured. All of the dead and all but 8 of the injured were Christian worshipers at the church. Al Qaeda is suspected and the attack is similar to others that have occurred against Christian churches in Iraq.

Inexplicably, the President issued a statement inventing "dozens" of Muslim victims:

The attack on a church in Alexandria, Egypt caused 21 reported deaths and dozens of injured from both the Christian and Muslim communities.

A few weeks ago I was struck by how far off liberals, and the President in particular, have drifted from reality when it comes to the victimhood of the Muslim community. Remember back during the Ground Zero Mosque fight the daily reports of violence, vandalism, and vitriol against Muslims in America? If you only knew what you heard from the liberal media, you'd probably be justified in believing that Muslims were living under siege in this country. The Muslim victimhood meme would make sense to you.

But the truth is that Muslims in this country are far less likely to be targeted because of their religion than are, for example, Jews. By an order of magnitude. In 2009, there were roughly two and a half bias crimes against Jews per day. No wonder the President has to make up crimes against Muslims both here and abroad. How will he convince libtards that Muslims deserve special treatment if they're not a major victim class?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:18 AM | Comments (176)
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