Object lesson for 2009

Rastenburg

 

Never, ever, send a one-armed one-eyed man or Tom Cruise to do something that needs to be done right.

Amateur night at the White House and the State Department

You’ve probably heard the latest from Pakistan by now, so I won’t bore you with the details of that particular bloodbath.

But if anything will finally illustrate to the most know-nothing Bush and GOP supporters that we’ve had bipolar kindergarteners running this country’s foreign policy since January 2001, the fallout from Bhutto’s murder should suffice.

In a peanutshell (quite adequate to contain the substance of 21st century American foreign policy):

• The spawn of Reagan-era U.S. policy toward Afghanistan blows up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
• Bush (heavily under Cheney’s influence) declares global war on terror and extorts the cooperation of an already-unstable, nuclear-armed Muslim country (Pakistan, in case you haven’t read the news for the past 2.5 decades) in said GWAT.
• Bush (or Cheney) orders the invasion of Afghanistan – probably a reasonable rat hunt since we helped spawn the rise of the Taliban as well as the other warlords  in that perverse Flanders Field of a rock farm.
• Bush – channeling Cheney and a whole bunch of Nixon-Reagan era manifest destiny disciples – decides to bring democracy to the Middle East and to defeat terror by invading Iraq, thus distracting us from the Afghanistan rat-catching expedition.
• While contributing to a rising Islamic radicalism and militancy by invading Iraq, the Bush administration is distracted (or bored?) from the Afghanistan expedition.
• U.S. adventurism in Iraq and support of our man in Pakistan also help fuel a rising militancy in Pakistan while we engage in the schizophrenia of supporting Musharraf for his ostensible anti- al Qaida stance and criticizing him for his anti-democracy stance.
• And after finally going through the motions of being a democratic society, Pakistan  one of its prime candidates shot and shredded.
• And our fearless leader/decider’s response? He asks Musharraf to go ahead with elections.

Some may say that we have a bunch of psychotics running our foreign policy. I still subscribe to the theory that we have stupid amateurs who couldn’t figure out a Fisher Price shape and color box for ages 2 and under.

Vicariously nuking David Albo . . . . or, ‘Eet’s a beumb!’

Those wild and crazy guys over at the Federation of American Scientists have another neat piece of learning software that’ll make ‘duck and cover’ absolutely uncool . . . . literally.

The Nuclear Weapons Calculator (or Nucular Weapons Calculator to our dumbass buddy at Pennsy Ave.) lets you decide just how much destruction to wreak on your favorite American city.

Stiletto: the yield range for Washington D.C. will encompass your favorite Virginia state legislator’s house, hint hint . . . .

And while you’re going MAD on your favorite metropolitan area, here’s a little mood music . . . .

Dr. Strangelove? More like the Nutty Professor.

Thanks to Stepher (via Bagel) and Drudge for this cup of morning BWAHAHAHAHA!

photo courtesy Federation of American Scientists

 Nuclear warheads mistakenly flown on B-52, landing at Barksdale AFB

By Michael Hoffman
Military Times

A B-52 bomber mistakenly loaded with five nuclear warheads flew from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, resulting in an Air Force-wide investigation, according to three officers who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.The B-52 was loaded with Advanced Cruise Missiles, part of a Defense Department effort to decommission 400 of the ACMs. But the nuclear warheads should have been removed at Minot before being transported to Barksdale, the officers said. The missiles were mounted onto the pylons of the bomber’s wings.read article here

What I love is the name of the website – The Town Talk.

Mrs. Humphreys recently went to visit her daughter and son-in-law in Metairie. The Daughters of the American Revolution on Thursday held their annual tea party. A B-52H brought five special visitors to town in time for the parish church rummage sale.

And here’s our special visitor . . . . (makes it sound like an out-of-wedlock birth, eh?)

Jump in my Stratofortress

It’s as big as a whale

And we’re about to set saillllllllll

It’s small comfort, but the U.S. military really does try to make it as hard as possible for folks to arm these little party favors. Having had an immediate relative who was part of an arming party for tactical nukes, I can say with some measure of knowledge that they don’t have electrical power to the warhead arming and detonation circuits unless you physically open one up and connect the ‘device’s’ battery properly. It’s not exactly the sort of task one can do unauthorized without being noticed and probably shot and killed unless you have a whole lot of people in on a conspiracy. (Where’s SPECTRE when you need them?)

But last week’s little spectacle makes one wonder just how far up ther collective ass, the heads of Minot AFB’s nuke weapons, armorer and flightline safety staffs were that day. Not to mention the watch staff and involved aircraft commander from the bomb wing in question.

As for their indestructibility, yeah, they’re pretty damned tough if mishandled. But there have been some really ‘fun’ incidents, like . . .

 “January 24, 1961, Goldsboro, North Carolina

In what nearly became a nuclear catastrophe, a B-52 bomber on airborne alert carrying two nuclear weapons broke apart in midair. The B-52 experienced structural failure in its right wing and the aircraft’s resulting breakup released the two weapons from a height of 2,000-10,000 feet. One of the bomb’s parachutes deployed properly and that weapon’s damage was minimal. However, the second bomb’s parachute malfunctioned and the weapon broke apart upon impact, scattering its components over a wide area. According to Daniel Ellsberg, the weapon could have accidentally fired because “five of the six safety devices had failed.” Nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp supported this assertion, saying that “only a single switch” had “prevented the bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area.”

Despite an extensive search of the waterlogged farmland where the weapon was believed to have landed, the bomb’s highly enriched uranium core was never recovered. In order to prevent any discovery of the lost portion of the weapon, the Air Force purchased an easement which required that permission be obtained before any construction or digging could begin in the area. Three crew members were killed in the crash.

The accident was apparently so serious that it was reported to newly-elected President John F. Kennedy. According to Newsweek, President Kennedy was informed after the accident that “there had been more than 60 accidents involving nuclear weapons” since World War II, “including two cases in which nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missiles were actually launched by inadvertence.” As a result of the Goldsboro accident, the U.S. placed many new safety devices on its nuclear arsenal and the Soviet Union was encouraged to do the same.”

Thank you, Department of Defense, for making me feel safe at night.

A reason to distrust your government and corporate, pseudo-populist media . . .

Greg Gibson/Associated Press, 1997

By KEVIN SACK

Published: August 30, 2007

ATLANTA, Aug. 29 — Richard A. Jewell, whose transformation from heroic security guard to Olympic bombing suspect and back again came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media, died Wednesday at his home in Woodbury, Ga. He was 44.

The cause of death was not released, pending the results of an autopsy that will be performed Thursday by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the coroner in Meriwether County, about 60 miles southwest of here, said that Mr. Jewell died of natural causes and that he had battled serious medical problems since learning he had diabetes in February.

read rest of article

One of the times I was ashamed to be a journalist . . . . 

Flying in my own private Domodevo . . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070824/wl_nm/russia_usa_bomber_dc

 “An astounded member of the U.S. delegation said the bomber was not for sale but that it would cost at least $500 million if it were to be sold on the spot.

“That is no problem. It is such a cool machine,” the Russian was quoted as saying by the newspaper, which said its reporter overheard the conversation.”

I hear they did entertain an offer to sell Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Keith Strickland . . . .

If I were the Bundeswehr (besides having to eat for several hundred thousand . . . )

I’d tell Tom Cruise, “Sure, you can film at our facilities, as long as you do some real method acting . . . like losing the arm and the eye and a few fingers . . . for real.”

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/20070625/118279999700.html

I stand corrected . . . .

Raincoaster brought this to my attention.

Truly a shame I didn’t find this until now . . .

because it beats dogs playing poker as art any day of the week . . .

 (From artofmarkbryan.com via kchristieh’s blog)

And, after seeing this little piece of tomfoolery (see link below) from the radio and television press dinner Wednesday night, if I ever see NBC’s David Gregory in person I will spit in his face.

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2622366n