We’ve had Cabbage Patch Kids and Tickle-Me Elmos. What is the gift of the 2004 Christmas shopping season?
Apparently, it’s poker.
Is there any freakin’ kind of store out there that isn’t carrying casino-style chips and Texas Hold’em sets? Heck, even Bed, Bath & Beyond has a selection. Cool game, but this craze really needs to tone down already.
No offense intended to the Fat Guy and his obsession.
It was a bloodier-than-usual day in Iraq as the terrorists desperately work to stave off the pending elections.
Suicide car bombers struck Iraq’s two main Shi’ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala yesterday, killing at least 62 people and wounding nearly 130, six weeks before a historic election.
Both bombs, which went off about two hours apart, exploded near crowded bus stations in a seemingly co-ordinated attempt to cause as much bloodshed as possible among Shi’ites, a long-oppressed majority expected to dominate the January 30 vote.
Earlier in Baghdad, gunmen killed three Electoral Commission employees after hauling them from a car on a busy street.
In Najaf, the suicide bomber detonated his vehicle about 300 metres from the Imam Ali shrine, near crowds of people queuing for buses and taxis and not far from busy offices.
Medical officials said there were at least 48 dead and 90 wounded in the blast. Police imposed a curfew in Najaf’s old city.
In Karbala, where a suicide bomber stuck about two hours earlier, the main hospital said 14 people were killed and 39 wounded. A hospital official said all appeared to be civilians with many women and children among them.
In an unrelated occurrence, I’ve just about finished my Christmas shopping.
A little over a week ago, I announced the problem I was facing with the pending closing of my hosting service and lack of control of the domain targetcentermass.com. Because of the positive feedback to that post, along with the fact that I’m not yet tired of telling y’all what I think, I’ve decided to move to a new host and a somewhat new domain.
I’d like to announce the new site targetcentermass.net is going live starting … now. Yeah, there’s still some problems to be worked out and more issues are expected, but time is running out on me. I will continue to face these issues as they arise and as I am able, but all posts from now on will be cross-posted on both sites until targetcentermass.com goes away (expected to be Jan. 1, 2005).
I would ask that any who have done me the honor of linking or blogrolling me be so kind as to update my listing to targetcentermass.net. I would also like to thank my new hosting service, Total Choice Hosting, for their receptiveness and responsiveness to date.
The libertarian in me was initially dismayed when I saw the above headline. Then I read the story.
Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.
The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.
Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.
“It’s sad news. It’s disturbing news. But it’s not unpredictable,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. “The nation is at war, even if it’s not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface.”
The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.
….
Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.
As with most surveys, the key lies in the questions and how the answers are interpreted. According to this story, the polling consisted of only four questions.
The survey asked respondents about four specific restrictions, all of which have been seriously suggested, noted Shanahan.
Specifically, the survey found:
- 27 percent of respondents said all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government.
- 26 percent said mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies.
- 29 percent agreed undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising.
- 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage.
Apparently a “yes” response to any one of these four questions lumps would lump a respondent into the 44% favoring restrictions, while a “no” to all would go into the 48% opposing restrictions.
Well, lump me in with those 44% bastards. I’d go no to the first question, but feel that, to a certain degree, the other three should be considered and pursued given the nature of our current enemy. Welcome to the realities of this war, folks.
I wonder about the unmentioned 8% whose answers apparently consisted of some combination of “no” or “beats the hell outta me, fella” or “what’s a Muslim?”
We’d better be talking about some unobtrusive permits here.
The City Council today approved a measure that will require strippers to wear permits while they are on stage.
City Councilman Chip Haass pushed the amended human display ordinance as making it easier for police to identify dancers.
But a lawyer representing several strip clubs in the city said it would also create a physical danger by making it easier for an obsessed customer to find out a dancer’s real name and where she lives.
Attorney Jim Deegear has said he will file a lawsuit challenging the measure, which the 11-member council passed unanimously early Friday during a marathon meeting that began Thursday afternoon.
Deegear says the city’s strict rules are part of an effort to drive his clients out of business.
The strip clubs’ attorney makes a very valid objection about the publication of a dancer’s personal information. This is a rather poor idea.
There is one lingering question, though: is some sort of test needed to obtain such a permit and, if so, how is it scored?
Always at least simmering on the back burner, relations heated up a bit between China and Taiwan as a Taiwanese official called proposed Chinese legislation a potential legal foundation for attack.
Taiwan condemned China’s proposed anti-secession law on Saturday, calling it a move to establish a legal basis to attack the island.
Chinese state media said on Friday that Beijing planned to send the draft law for deliberation during a parliament session on Dec. 25-29. It was seen as a move to head off a formal declaration of Taiwan independence from the mainland.
“They are looking for a legal basis to invade Taiwan,” said Chiu Tai-san, vice chairman and spokesman for the Mainland Affairs Council, which sets policy toward Taiwan’s arch-rival.
“If they want to punish or invade Taiwan they must have some legal basis to make it okay to attack,” Chiu said.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened war if the self-governing, democratic island declares statehood.
The official Xinhua news agency did not say why China was enacting an anti-secession law instead of the tougher reunification law it had floated earlier. That law would have bound a Chinese leader to order an attack on Taiwan if the island formally declared nationhood.
China should be very careful with this legislation, as they may be codifying a means by which Taiwan could maneuver them into a war, if only for the Chinese to save face. Though they are working to upgrade and enhance their forces, it is doubtful that China currently has the air and naval capabilities to attack and bring about a successful conclusion before the impact of U.S. assistance to Taiwan is felt. A failed assault by China could possibly serve to strengthen Taiwan’s position in international circles while weakening China’s at home.
The Associated Press is trying to put the worst spin possible on the aftermath of the Fallujah operation, perhaps the most stunningly successful urban operation in military history.
American troops face sporadic but cunning resistance from insurgents as they sweep the city of Fallujah more than a month after U.S. and Iraqi forces invaded the militants’ stronghold, U.S. officials said Friday.
So the terrorist remnants are more cunning? Hell yeah and a great big “Duh!” to the AP. The dumb and crazy are now serving as corpses.
They characterized the insurgents who remain as less suicidal than those who fought the initial battle, using a newly discovered tunnel system or knocking holes in walls to move unseen and avoid American troops.
“Pretty much the ones who have wanted to be martyrs outright have been killed and the ones who remain are the smart ones, or the ones who have been able to avoid our clearing forces, so we continue to clear, to back clear, and to clear again,” said Lt. Col. Daniel Wilson, deputy for current operations for the 1st Marine Division.
“We know that they’re slithering around in the tunnels from one place to another,” Wilson said.
The U.S. military claims that 1,200 insurgents were killed in the weeklong invasion to destroy what were believed to be the insurgents’ main bases in Iraq. At least 50 Marines and eight Iraqi soldiers also died. No civilian casualty figures have been released.
Weeks later, the city is in ruins. The bodies of dogs lie in the streets, piles of rubble line the roads and what little infrastructure there was before the onslaught has been shattered.
More cunning but numerically shredded. I can live with that.
The Marine officials said the insurgents are far weaker now, pointing to a 60 percent drop in the number of attacks in western Iraq from the week before the Nov. 8 invasion to last week. They said a cordon is keeping insurgents from coming back in large numbers and that the destruction of the guerrillas’ Fallujah bases would help counter the new threats ahead of Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections.
“It hinders their ability to interfere with the election process and it hinders their ability to discredit the government because they’re not able to set up these bases like they had in Fallujah,” Marine Maj. Jim West, an intelligence planning officer, said at a briefing with two other Marine officials. “They don’t have a safe haven where they can conduct the horrific torture that they did.”
Fallujah was believed to be the focal point for kidnappings and beheadings orchestrated by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terror group al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi is believed to have slipped out ahead of the U.S. ground assault.
Dang those Marine officials for pointing out facts showing not only the success of the operation, but also overall improvement it has rendered.
As the years go by, I grow to understand the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sweet alcoholic drinks aggressively marketed to young people are anything but “cool and fashionable” and are luring troubling numbers of teens — especially girls — to engage in underage drinking, the American Medical Association said Thursday.
A nationwide AMA poll of 741 youngsters aged 12 to 18 found that 31 percent of girls and 19 percent of boys had consumed drinks some call “alco-pop” or “malternatives” in the past six months.
The products include fruit-flavored malt drinks with soda pop-like flavors and packaging that critics say disguises the alcohol content. The beverages, such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice, are this generation’s version of wine coolers.
Teen girls said they drank the sweetened beverages more than any other alcoholic drinks, while women 21 and over ranked them as their least-consumed alcoholic beverage, a second poll showed.
Jeff Becker, president of the Beer Institute, an industry trade group, said brewers “share the AMA’s concern over illegal underage drinking regardless of the type of beverage being consumed.”
“Flavored alcohol beverages are not new products in the marketplace, and marketing for these is directed at adults,” Becker said.
Where were you when I was a teen, AMA? Granted, a few more options now, but back then we bought beer and whiskey for the boys and Boone’s Farm, Strawberry Hill and Mad Dog 20/20 for the chicks. Then came wine coolers.
Perhaps we can get another survey on teens playing Truth or Dare and the related effects of surging hormones.
Man, I miss those days. Man, should I ever have a daughter, I pity the boy who hopes to go out with her.
If the allegations are true, this so-called soldier disgusts me.
Police have arrested a soldier they say had his cousin shoot him so he wouldn’t have to return to Iraq.
Army Spc. Marquise J. Roberts, of Hinesville, Ga., suffered a minor wound Tuesday to his left leg from a .22-caliber pistol, police said. He was treated at a hospital, then arrested after he and his cousin allegedly admitted making up a story about the shooting.
After giving differing accounts of the incident, “they just broke down and confessed that they concocted the whole story so he didn’t have to go back to the war,” Philadelphia police Lt. James Clark said Thursday.
Police charged Roberts with filing a false report and charged his cousin, Ronald Fuller, with aggravated assault and other charges.
Roberts, who was visiting family in Philadelphia, initially claimed he was shot during an attempted robbery, but Fuller had said the incident occurred at another location during an argument, according to Clark.
Roberts, 23, was on a two-week leave from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which led the assault on Baghdad in 2003. He is scheduled to return to Iraq within the next few months. The division has been home since the summer of 2003.
Police said Roberts, a supply specialist who had spent seven months in Iraq, was distraught about having to return to combat duty and wanted to stay with his family.
Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a 3rd Infantry spokesman, said Roberts had been scheduled to return this week to Fort Stewart, Ga.
Roberts could face military discipline if the charges prove true, Kent said, but the civilian case probably would proceed first.
There is no evidence that this is a story of a stand on principle or conscience, but rather one of cowardice and an absence of a sense of duty. If this man is as guilty as it seems, he should face and endure his civilian punishment, followed by as much prosecution and punishment called for by the UCMJ. After he departs (preferably dishonorably) from the service, he can bide is time until that fateful day when his grandchildren ask him of his service.
“Well, your grandpappy served, came back and then decided to have ol’ cousin Ron to cap him in the leg so grandpappy didn’t have to go help his buddies again. Maybe I should’ve just shoveled shit in Louisiana.”
Such a disgraceful story to break on the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the Battle of the Bulge.
Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last offensive and one of the most desperate and courageous stands in the storied history of the U.S. Army.
American veterans mark and remember the day. The day is also remembered and honored by the people of Belgium, who lost thousands of civilians during the fighting.
More on the U.S. veterans of the battle can be found here.