Along with the guys hawking show tickets on Broadway, today there's a guy shouting pretty loudly that he has immigration cards for sale today half price. This can't be good, can it?

Some kinda chatty Kathy, now. But I think the real deal is that's all he's got. Zarqawi is the big guy now. And he remains focused on Iraq.

See, it is the central battle in the war on terror.

Just a little advice. Not that I am trying to be an elitist or anything, but when you come to New York City, try to be a little less...impressed. I think that New Yorkers see the visitors from not-New York, and are 1) a little bit afraid that folks who are so impressed with the place they live in every day are the rubes that they are afraid elected the idiot President, and 2) seeing everyone so impresssed with the place they live in every day, they think they are special or something.

Don't get me wrong - visit, see the sights, go to the shows, buy the FDNY hats, but play kinda hard to get. Make like it isn't really all that special. Try it for a while. I think it might help.

PS - yes, I know.

You emerge from underground and you have to cross to the other side of the street because an amazingly polite cop tells you "Other side, please" because the police tape is all around and they have those little tents with the numbers on them just like on CSI.

UPDATE: This would have been it. Wow, a shooting at a "rap bash." That's news.

Two weeks ago:

Dear Green Day

Screw you.

Signed,

Idiot America

Now Instapundit verifies it.

Reason number 798 why the Islamofascists will lose. While they are stoning their women to death for adultery, our women are killing them.

How great is that, to be at work today? And in NYC, to boot. At least this time I don't have the death cold.

Freedom. Democracy. For some reason, it has earned its skeptics. But they are wrong. And they are being shown to be wrong, empirically (so to speak). Michael Ledeen has some words, of course, on the absolutely blatant Iranian and Syrian intervention in Iraq. David Brooks notes:

Bush concluded that peace would never come as long as Palestine was an undemocratic tyranny, and that the Palestinians needed to see their intifada would never bring triumph.

We are a long way from peace. But as Robert Satloff observes in The Weekly Standard, Israel's coming disengagements "will constitute a huge leap - both in psychology and in strategy - rivaling the original Oslo accords in historic importance." And the U.S. is already raising millions to help build a decent Palestinian polity.

Oh, and Ralph Peters. Spotted on Powerline.

UPDATE: More Ledeen.

Due to lack of permalinks, just go here and find the bits about Franklin Raines. He's asking why a former Mondale campaign manager and former Clinton buddy Franklin Raines aren't being called into account as CEOs who have run Fanne Mae poorly.

I mean, duh. If Fannie Mae were run by someone who knew someone in Texas who once donated money to the Bush campaign, this would be huge. HUGE! A sign of corporate greed run amok, etc. and so on. Instead, you have bigtime Democrats running a semi-government corporation into the ground. Yawn, says the press.

Kaus isn't usually so shy.

"And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid ... And the angel said unto them, "Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings o great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord."

"And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men."

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." - Linus Van Pelt

For those who dropped by and left nice comments, thanks. I'm not going away, but blogging likely very light until the New Year.

Best wishes to you and yours. Peace on Earth, and Good Will Toward Men.

UPDATE: Rich Galen. That is all.

As I have been spending time doing some remodeling in the house, working, and preparing for the holidays, blogging has dropped to near zero, ans so has the visitor count. As the saying goes, no free ice cream, people stop dropping by. I think the right way to this would be to get petulant at some hate email I received, and to wonder for a while whether to continue blogging at all, and then to ponder that idea publicly for a while with no actual content, and then go on hiatus to decide.

That woulda worked better, I think.

My third post on this blog was about the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and all the talk about how PNAC was a plan for empire that the Defense Department, populated by participants in PNAC, was implementing. Well, Bill Kristol, a PNAC bigwig, takes out after Secretary Rumsfeld, a PNAC participant, concluding "These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have. "

So, yes, dogpile on Rumsfeld. Now Kristol hasn't been the biggest fan of the Bush administration, so it isn't as big a break as some will make of it. But I think that Kristol gets it wrong, and Dowdifies Rumsfeld. The trigger is, yet again, the answer about the armored HMMWV's, which I quoted in full below. Kristol takes the Schwarzkopf view that Rumsfeld was blaming the Army, where as I read it, he is desribing the great efforts that the service has undertaken to remedy the situation. He is giving credit to the Army leadership. Kristol says that Rumsfeld is dodging responsibility, as if he weren't involved in the situation. But Kristol leaves out the last paragraph of Rumsfeld's response.

The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore.

That shows that Rumsfeld is personally aware of the situation - noting that armored HMMWV's are in Washington where they are not needed, and that they are on there way to Iraq, where they are, presumably due to Rumsfeld's personal intervention.

I guess now that McCain is anti-Rummy, the whole of the media must be, also. I saw GEN Schwartzkopf on Hardball last night and he said he was "angry" that in the answer to the armored HMMWV question, that the SecDef had blamed the Army. Part of McCain's heartburn is the "arrogant answer" he gave. Here is what he said:

Q: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told that they are being – the Army is – I think it’s something like 400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it.

As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe – it’s a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they’re working at it at a good clip. It’s interesting, I’ve talked a great deal about this with a team of people who’ve been working on it hard at the Pentagon. And if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up. And you can go down and, the vehicle, the goal we have is to have as many of those vehicles as is humanly possible with the appropriate level of armor available for the troops. And that is what the Army has been working on.

And General Whitcomb, is there anything you’d want to add to that?

GEN. WHITCOMB: Nothing. [Laughter] Mr. Secretary, I’d be happy to. That is a focus on what we do here in Kuwait and what is done up in the theater, both in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. As the secretary has said, it’s not a matter of money or desire; it is a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it. The 699th, the team that we’ve got here in Kuwait has done [Cheers] a tremendous effort to take that steel that they have and cut it, prefab it and put it on vehicles. But there is nobody from the president on down that is not aware that this is a challenge for us and this is a desire for us to accomplish.

SEC. RUMSFELD: The other day, after there was a big threat alert in Washington, D.C. in connection with the elections, as I recall, I looked outside the Pentagon and there were six or eight up-armored humvees. They’re not there anymore. [Cheers] [Applause] They’re en route out here, I can assure you. Next. Way in the back. Yes.

Doesn't sound so flip or arrogant to me.

Now I heard Joe Biden saying that well, if our forces were so "ill equipped" then we should have waited. So, we should have just said, oh, Hussein, don't worry, we don't have enough armored HMMWVs to take you on, so just keep on keeping on.

Please. NRO editors have a pretty good response to the HMMWV thing, but there are many practical reasons why the idea that the Army should have been fielded with armored HMMWV's is kinda silly. First of all, none of the current carpers were clamoring then for these things. HMMWV's are not armored vehicles. But let's imagine that the DoD - i.e., Rumsfeld - went to Congress in September of 2002 (remember that this is the budget cycle) and asked for a billion dollars or so to get armored HMMWV's. Why do you need them? Because we plan to invade a country and occupy it for a long time. Of course, in September, Congress had not yet authorized force, so it would have to come after that. So maybe a supplemental request after that - well, the President had not yet decided to go to war - we were still giving diplomacy a chance, with the whole UN thing and all. If we were purchasing equipment for an occupation before diplomacy was done, they would have said something to the effect that we were rushing to war, we weren't giving peace a chance, whatever. Hell, they said that anyway. So the President made the call in January, according to Woodward, so let's say that at that time Rumsfeld went to Congress and asked for the money.

Bah. The whole scenario is so patently ridiculous, and the current hullabaloo so overblown that it just boggles the mind.

Have you heard O'Reilly on radio? Of course you haven't. Because in my opinion, it is completely unlistenable. Control that, big man.

That show is about as good as Drudge on radio.

Screw you.

Signed,

Idiot America

Seems that NPR has discovered that Iran may not be the world's most free society. May be some problems with upcoming elections.

Also, some terrorism expert says the war on terror is a bad idea. Oh, sure, its worked pretty well so far, killing and capturing bad guys, but maybe its time to change the focus. Not entirely sure what to, though. But it seems problematic, I guess, because the idea of a war on terror seems to have helped Bush get reelected.

Also, Europeans live in fear because of the Muslims among them. That was pretty surprising.

Okay, Ukraine. Freedom is good. But what's that whole poisoning thing all about? And, seriously, the guys going "looks like Ohio" really lack any sense of proportion.

MoveOn.org. Howard Dean. Can we get that lucky?

Who knew that traffic on the Baltimore Beltway was worse than DC's?

Virginia's Mark Warner. Seems like a better bet for a Democrat future. Democrat governor of a Red State, a former venture capitalist. Hell, I'd vote for him for sticking DC with that baseball deal, and not Virginia. If his wife starts going by Mrs. Warner in 2005, its a done deal he's running.

Bush admin expresses confidence in Annan? And keeps Mineta on? They told us if we voted for Goldwater there would be 500,000 troops in Vietnam.

Rumsfeld. Armor. Please. We fought all of Gulf War I without armored HMMWV's. Armor is good, we keep adding it. But it's like Homeland Security, we can't just defend our way out of this. We need to defeat the "insurgents." Then you can ride in a taxi and things will be okay.

Reading Automobile magazine I see that Texas is putting Wi-Fi in all of its rest areas on the interstates.

I also saw that Cadillac is putting a baser engine in the CTS to make it cheaper. A little mill that's 210 hp (IIRC) to put it in the same price range as the Hemi 300C with 340 hp. I'm thinking that's not a winning move. (blaster is a car guy.)

Since I am already treading on Instapundits turf with the free Wi-Fi revolution report, a bit on comfy chairs. Tonight, in the mall, comfy chairs in the middle of the hall. Shiatsu massage chairs - insert quarters. Seems like a good idea.

Steroids. People still watch baseball?

Signed up for class next term - I'll be 25% done with my Master's in April!

Why do people call O'Reilly conservative? Because he's on Fox? I use to like him, but he's so full of himself I can't even watch.

Scott Peterson. Seriously, why are we talking about this? Don't waste the time on trying to go for death. Put him jail. I suspect that something bad will happen to him.

Heard on NPR some guy saying that the Shi'ites in Iraq will dominate the elections because they are the majority (duh) and that they will then try to ally themselves with Iran. The guy was supposed to be some smart guy, too, I forget who he was. Still, don't believe that crap. The Shi'ites of Iraq don't want to live under mullahs like they do in Iran. If they did, the Iranians wouldn't be trying so hard to influence the elections. And, oh, by the way, Washington Post, thanks for noticing that Iran is a bad guy!

That's all I got.

Back in the days, in Italy, the folks I hung out with were great admirers of the grape. We loved Italian wine and the fact we could get it so cheaply. We were young, drunk, loud, American soldiers in a foreign land. We were quintessentially ugly Americans, without the white socks and sandals.

We had a saying that was a joke when we knew we were getting a bit rowdy, and started drawing stares: "Mi dispiace, no parle Italiano, sono Canadien!" Which is a mistranslation of "I'm sorry, I don't speak Italian, I'm Canadian." The point wasn't that we were ashamed to be American, we were ashamed of ourselves, and wanted people to blame our behavior on Canada, not the US.

So I find this very funny....

Feeling a bit guilty for everytime that I heard Pantera and thought "those guys should be shot."

I had this Death Cold way before those two! Of course, look at Reynolds' front page, and note that this represents "lighter than usual" blogging.

How does he do it?

From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea -- written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo -- There is no substitute for victory!

Beat Navy!

UPDATE: Well that could have gone better.

When you read stuff like this, it makes you wonder why we aren't drawing up strike packages for Paris.

Patrick Ruffini is back - I had forgotten until I saw a link somewhere else.

It is kind of strange, listening to the news, reading the paper, and hearing names that I know. I heard a classmate interviewed on NPR the other day, which was kind of neat. And the names I've heard have not been on the casualty list. Until now.

A few days ago, an airplane crashed in the mountains of Afghanistan, killing all 6 aboard. Three of them were soldiers. One of them, LTC Mike McMahon, was a name I knew. Cadet McMahon was my first company commander during Cadet Basic Training. He really set the example for us New Cadets, and we thought highly of him.

I never saw him or heard anything of him after that summer, but some part of who I am today is because of him.

Well done. Be thou at peace.

More from Major Dad, found through SGT Hook.

Is Syria the next Libya? He points to some things that are good signs, anyway. But as to the main point, that's a good question, isn't it?

I read this column by William Raspberry in the Post the other day, and was disgusted. Mr. Raspberry says he doesn't have a plan, and won't make a plan, because it is just too scary. Won't do any good, in his opinion, to be prepared.

Of course, I am an advocate of being prepared. Which reminds me, I should redo that post, because I've updated my box contents.

But anyway, I'm afraid that a lot of people feel like Mr. Raspberry, that there is nothing that they can do, so why bother? This survey (PDF) says:

Fewer than one in four (23%) families nationally has a basic emergency plan with the bare minimum of components: at least two days of food and water, a flashlight, a portable radio and spare batteries, emergency phone numbers, and a meeting place for family members in case of evacuation. In New York City, despite the higher level of concern about possible additional acts of terrorism, only 14% of families have made basic preparations.

23%! Even worse, that survey also reveals that most people think that another attack will happen, and that the government is not adequately prepared to help them.

If you don't think that the government can help you, then you should be planning to take care of yourself. Sure, if DC gets nuked, and you live in DC, a bugout box will not save you. But in the event that the worst case scenario doesn't happen, you are better off being prepared. Because people are right - the government isn't prepared to take care of everybody. There really isn't a way for the government to be prepared to care of all of us if they also have to try to take care of the critical infrastructure. Just like we lock the doors or have an alarm even though we have cops. They can't be everywhere.

Seems to me that if you thought that someone else couldn't take care of you, you would do something yourself. But that isn't how people are responding.

I think this means that basically people feel helpless. No wonder Tom Ridge and Homeland Security are given such short shrift. They don't feel like the information they are getting is helping them. But the ready.gov site gives people information they can act on. It isn't that hard, and it isn't that expensive, and it makes sense. The point of preparation beforehand is that it is too late to plan once disaster strikes.

Mr. Raspberry, and the 77% of the American public that hasn't made a plan, may be fine. Maybe the next terrorist strike will kill them, and it won't matter. Or maybe nothing happens, or something happens and it doesn't affect them. But in my book, it's cheap insurance. And it isn't just preparation against terror, either. Next time the power goes out, you know where the flashlights are. That's worth something right there.

PS - 5 blaster points if you can explain the title of this post.

Rush was talking about this LA Times article on his show today. I found it interesting, given what I wrote below about our communications strategy, or lack thereof. The article takes a dim view of a Pentagon briefing that showed Iraqi troops singing the Iraqi national anthem, labeling it propaganda.

Basically, this article points to a number of items that are examples of tactical communications, not strategic. I have zero heartburn with the military announcing the beginning of an a offensive when it really isn't beginning, just to pulse the system and gather intelligence. Propaganda - which is has been twisted into a negative word - is getting your message out. It was important in WWII, it is important today.

The DSB paper says that the US has had many successes with communication on the tactical front, but that the strategic is not failing - and Bush administration folks quoted in this article seem to agree about that last part.