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August 17, 2007
Weekend musings
It's been a long time since we've put up a post consisting mostly of links to interesting and thought-provoking writing by other folks at other blogs. So here we go:
Stephen over at The Thinkery sums up What We've Accomplished
As is always the case, the same fanatics who deny women a place in society because of "religion" are the ones who ensure that they can earn money as prostitutes, indeed are much happier with prostitution being the main way that a woman can make money independently of a man, because it allows them to indulge their own dark desires while maintaining their own auras of purity and piety in their public facade.
A couple weeks ago Stephen penned this brief but extremely insightful post on the recent GOP White House hopeful's debate in Iowa on a fine Sunday morning: Breaking The Sabbath Commandment in which he peeks behind the curtain and realizes that the Wizard of Oz is a fraud.
Why weren't they in church? Isn't there even one of these elderly, white male Christians that considers worshipping in the house of God on the Lord's Day a trifle more important than engaging in politics?
And then there is long-time friend of PK, the Gun Totting Liberal. GTL takes today's news about the Pentagon paying $1 million to ship a couple of 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas... and ties it into his experience as an Iraq veteran.
I swear to God, I saw MILLIONS of dollars worth of once-shiny, brand new equipment and vehicles lined up in lonely grid yards, covered in sand, not being used in the least; NEVER used, never to BE used — 0.2 miles on their odometers, literally ROTTING in “The Desert” — serving as nothing more than expensive monuments to tax dollar fraud at the highest levels of our “Gub’mint”.I witnessed civilians being paid six-figure, tax-free salaries to work side-by-side with our Airmen and Soldiers who made sixteen grand a year to perform the exact, same jobs; the civilians being sub-contracted by a subcontractor of KBR, who was subcontracted by Halliburton or somebody else — saw it all the time. The Airmen were held to UCMJ standards; the civilians being held to beaurocratic, “Gub’mint”, “fifty strikes and you’re OUT” standards. Call it what you will; spin it the way you wish; I call it as I see it: BLATANT FRAUD, WASTE and ABUSE; perhaps, even CRIMINAL in nature…
Meanwhile, there were all these alerts being passed down to we troops, asking us to participate in these “programs” to report any “Fraud, Waste, And Abuse” to our chains of command. “If you notice something suspicious, such as an invoice for eight hundred dollars for a toilet seat, please let your immediate supervisor know about it ASAP” (paraphrased) bulletins were being passed around all the time around the “war zone”. NOTHING about suspicious contracts. NOTHING about suspicious activity such as a bus driver bragging about being paid six figures to drive a bus around base when I had six Airmen with military bus drivers licenses who were being paid an average of sixteen grand a year — no “fraud alert” there — oh, no Siree BOB…
Last but not least, driving home from work today I heard David Brooks make a very interesting observation while summing up what he's been seeing on the presidential campaign trail. Apparently nobody is asking the Democratic hopefuls what their policy would be on Al Queda if elected. It's not only a fair question but a rather important one! Al Queda, unlike Saddam, attacked us on OUR soil and have made no secret of their desire to do it again. So what would Hillary do? What would Joe Biden do? Obama? Don't you think this is a pretty darn important policy question?
Posted by Kevin at August 17, 2007 09:39 PM