About Face

Major General John Batiste, long touted by the anti-war left as a critic of the war in Iraq (he was) has abruptly switched sides, quit the anti-war Vote Vets group and has joined with Pete Hegseth and Vets for Freedom. An op-ed piece in the Washington Post co-authored by the two men calls for an end to the political posturing in Washington.

Congress has been entangled in a war-funding debate that pits war "supporters" against antiwar "defeatists." With all sides seemingly entrenched, a stalemate looms. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will soon begin stripping money from its training budget to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our military men and women deserve better than partisan politics; they deserve honest assessments of our nation's performance in fighting the Long War.

We are veterans of the Iraq war with vastly different experiences. Both of us commanded troops in Iraq. We, too, held seemingly entrenched, and incompatible, views upon our return. One of us spoke out against mismanagement of the war — failed leadership, lack of strategy and misdirection. The other championed the cause of successfully completing our mission.

Our perspectives were different, yet not as stark as the "outspoken general" and "stay-the-course supporter" labels we received. Such labels are oversimplified and inaccurate, and we are united behind a greater purpose.

Batiste was outspoken, but according to a few items I posted about at the time, his message was never quite what the far left thought it was. He called the Democrat's efforts to force a withdrawal, "Terribly naive" back in November of last year. It's nice that he finally acknowledged that the situation has turned around and is encouraging the politicians to stop the nonsense.

Michael Goldfarb over at the Worldwide Standard (who gets the H/T on this one) wonders if the left will now turn on Batiste:

The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today, and it will be interesting to see whether they turn on one of their own, or come around to the view, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the surge is working.

Well, you know they can't do the latter. They are emotionally invested in forcing a defeat. So its off to the attack! (Alternatively, they may simply ignore Batiste and pretend he never was with them before he was against them.)

Emma The Eagle Soars

A rather amusing article in the Sunday Times provides a first person account of wingwalking by Emma Parker Bowles - who is afraid of heights. An aviator named Vic Norman has brought wing walking back in Britain with his company AeroSuperBatics.

I am strapped to a pole on top of the wing of an aircraft old enough to be my grandfather, which is in a nosedive towards the earth 1,000ft below. As I plunge towards the blurry green Gloucestershire field, my body battered by the 3G force, the 150mph wind feels as though it is trying to rip my head off.

My neck muscles are straining like a German shot putter’s and my jowls are flapping about by my ears. Spit and snot are smeared across my face, which is frozen in a terrified shriek – a bit like Edvard Munch’s The Scream with flying goggles on.

Except I can’t scream, because I can’t breathe, and I am convinced that the last thing to go through my mind before I die will be the 2,100rpm propeller inches from my feet.

For someone with a fear of heights, wing walking is not fun. In fact it is the most horrible sensation I have experienced. As we get closer and closer to the ground in this awful death plunge, I squeeze my eyes closed and pray.

Heh. My wife would do it in a heartbeat if given the chance. Just a funny, non-political kind of story for a slow news Saturday. Here's the AeroSuperBatics website. Here's a history of the - er - art, from an American outfit that also does wingwalking. That company is Silver Wings Wingwalking and here's their site.  And if you're wondering if they are all quite mad, I wonder that myself. But they make it look so easy.

Heh. My wife would do it in a heartbeat if given the chance. Just a funny, non-political kind of story for a slow news Saturday. Here's the AeroSuperBatics website. Here's a history of the - er - art, from an American outfit that also does wingwalking. That company is Silver Wings Wingwalking and here's their site. If you're wondering if they are all quite mad, I wonder that myself. But they make it look so easy. And graceful.

The Grinch Mailman Who Stole Christmas

A New York City mailman has been arrested after authorities found 130 greeting cards in his car. The cards were addressed to other people, unfortunately for the mailman.

Michael Olivio was released on his own recognizance Thursday following his arrest the previous day, court records show. The exact charges against him were not listed in court records available early Saturday, and a spokesman for prosecutors did not immediately return a telephone call.

Olivio said he was "not allowed to talk," and his lawyer, Michelle Gelernt, declined to comment.

Postal authorities started getting complaints in June about greeting cards getting lost en route to residents of a Brooklyn ZIP code, U.S. Postal Inspection Service Special Agent Stephen Dolloff said in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

He set up stings involving decoy cards in September and again this week. The latest one included cash — and a hidden electronic transmitter. The transmitter showed that Olivio kept the card after finishing his mail route Wednesday, Dolloff said.

Authorities say that Olivio confessed to taking as many as 35 cards per day and had been stealing since February. There is no information on how much money was taken. It's never a good idea to send cash, anyway. This story emphasizes that point rather nicely.

Biofoolishness

Many thanks to Quilly Mammoth over at Just Barking Mad for pointing out this article from Smithsonian Magazine. (Heck, I get that and had not read the piece.) Titled Who's Fueling Whom? it is written by Richard Coniff and it positively destroys the myths of biofuel. It is a devastating article. This one is a must read. He hits many of the same things I have pointed out over and over: food prices are skyrocketing, the economics simply do not work and wildlife is already suffering - and will suffer even more. But he also points out the simple fact that there is not enough land to produce enough fuel. Period.

But don't biofuel subsidies buy us energy independence? President Bush, a former oil executive, declared last year that we are "addicted to oil." In this year's State of the Union speech, he set a national goal of producing 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017. The next morning, C. Ford Runge, who studies food and agriculture policy at the University of Minnesota, calculated that this would require 108 percent of the current crop if it all came from corn. Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease. When the weather turned dry in the Southeast this summer, for instance, some farmers lost up to 80 percent of their corn.

In a recent Foreign Affairs article, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor," Runge and co-author Benjamin Senauer noted that growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. (This year the dead zone, expanding with the corn crop, was the third-largest on record.) The article made the switch to corn ethanol sound about as smart as switching from heroin to cystal meth……

…..So let's flash forward five years. Twice a month you swing by the biofuels station to fill the 25-gallon tank in your sporty flex-fuel econo-car. (Pretend you've kissed the SUV goodbye.) Even this modest level of energy consumption will require a ten-acre farm to keep you on the highway for a year.

That might not sound too bad. But there are more than 200 million cars and light trucks on American roads, meaning they would require two billion acres' worth of corn a year (if they actually used only 50 gallons a month). The country has only about 800 million acres of potential farmland.

There is much more. This really is a must read. I have been gathering stories like this for some time trying to point out how crazy the logic of the wishful thinkers is. If you can call it logic. Frankly, there is big money in play here as well, as Coniff points out. Agricultural conglomerates are raking in windfalls of government subsidies and they know - full well - that the biofuel craze is a dead end. They are just getting all they can before the house of cards collapses.

There may be a role for biofuels, but it is not this mad rush to turn all of our food into fuel. The ecological damage of all this is unprecedented. Rainforests incinerated, wildlife slaughtered, biodiversity eliminated. It has never been easier to rape the planet. Say you are producing biofuel to fight global warming and you have a license to kill. Quite literally.

Please read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.

Arizona Illegal Immigration Law Challenge Thrown Out Of Court

A Federal judge tossed out a challenge to a new Arizona law that provides penalties for businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Both business groups and illegal immigrant advocates had filed suit against the law, scheduled to take effect on January 1st.

In his ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake wrote that the lawsuit was premature because there was no evidence that anybody had been harmed, and that the plaintiffs — a coalition of business and immigrant rights groups — were suing the wrong people.

The ruling said the law gives only investigatory authority to the governor and state attorney general, who were named as defendants. Wake said county prosecutors, who weren't defendants, actually have the power to enforce the law.

The plaintiffs had asked for a preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect. Farrell Quinlan, a spokesman for business groups in the suit, said they planned to file more information with the judge to answer what he sees as shortcomings in the complaint.

Alfredo Gutierrez, a spokesman for immigrant rights groups, said they plan to refile the lawsuit after Jan. 1, when they might be able to show damages caused by the law.

The law provides for penalties up to and including the permanent revocation of business licenses for offending companies. State authorities believe that the law is in full compliance with Federal laws. Since the Federal government appears to be stuck at top dead center, states and local governments are having to step in and do something.

Magi Mythbusting

The Washington Post has an interesting little article about the myths that have grown up about three kings visiting the Christ child. Not only is there no mention of kings in the scriptures, there isn't even a head count.

The scene ingrained in the public imagination — a stately procession of three kings in turbans, crowns, elaborate capes and fancy slippers, with an entourage of servants and camels trailing behind — is a common image in books and films, but it isn't from Scripture.

In fact, there's no evidence in the Gospels that the Magi were kings, or even that there were three, much less that they sidled up to a manger on dromedaries exactly 12 days after Jesus's birth.

"Legends pop up when people begin to look closely at historical events," said Christopher Bellitto, assistant professor of history at New Jersey's Kean University. "They want to fill in the blanks."

Only the Gospel of Matthew mentions "wise men from the East" who follow a star to Bethlehem. In the original Greek, they were called magoi (in Latin, magi), from the same root that gives us the word magic. It's been posited that they were astrologers or members of a Persian priestly caste.

The myths sprang up and were fleshed out many years after the events actually mentioned in Matthew. The third century Christian writer Tertullian called them 'almost kings'. In the sixth century, they acquired names, Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior and Balthazar and they - whoever or however many of them there were - became important figures. (By the way, none of this is new information, I actually found a sermon plan online discussing these points and others.) It is interesting tracing the way these kinds of embellishments develop over time, though.

None of which changes the fact that We Three Kings is still one of best known and best-loved Christmas carols. It's one of my favorites.

Trouble In Bolivia

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia and sycophant of Hugo Chavez, may be losing his grip on Bolivia. Protests, resistance and hunger strikes are going on in many areas and a political impasse appears to be at hand. Things aren't looking good for Chavez's vision of a socialist South America.

The tension between Morales and his opponents centers on his plan to write a new constitution, but that's only the latest quarrel in a much deeper, long-standing ideological dispute. Morales says a new constitution is needed to create more economic equity and social justice in South America's poorest nation, a place where the indigenous majority couldn't vote before 1952. His opponents fear he's using the constitution to satisfy authoritarian ambitions for a socialist state.

Facing the Dec. 14 deadline to approve a draft constitution, Morales's supporters in an elected constitutional assembly gathered in a military installation on Nov. 24 and passed a rough draft without any members of the opposition present. The document called for unlimited terms for the president and more federal authority over money now controlled by states. Street protests erupted in which three were killed and hundreds injured. The two sides have stopped talking to each other.

On Wednesday, Morales proposed an emergency referendum to allow voters to break the impasse by deciding whether he and the country's nine governors remain in office. Morales's supporters say they'll push ahead with a new constitution in the meantime, taking specific changes directly to voters for approval if necessary. The opposition backs the referendum — if the constitutional changes are put on hold for the moment.

So now everyone waits, feeling that something is bound to happen soon. Thousands of Morales's supporters marched peacefully through Cochabamba on Thursday, backing their leader. And here in the city of his opponents, they drank water and sucked on lollipops as the hunger strike entered its fifth day.

I've never really believed hunger strikes were particularly effective at accomplishing anything, but the Morales opponents appear to be genuine in their efforts. Unlike the Morales backing legislators who announced their hunger strike and were filmed by the BBC eating fried chicken. That must be the Cindy Sheehan hunger strike diet. (Even Morales supporters derided them pretty badly for that one.) Morales does seem to be in some real trouble right now. The passing of a "constitution" by a rump gathering of supporters is a pretty desperate move - nobody is going to see that as legitimate. Chavez's electoral defeat should give the Bolivian protesters heart, The Chavez movement may have hit its high water mark and may now be receding.