USA being patrolled by Sea Smurfs

According to this article in the Army Times, US troops are being deployed domestically without any known or admitted clear and present danger to law and order. Their mission is to be an "on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

And..."the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”)."

So, I am not making this up when I say that soon your streets may be patrolled by sea-smurfs.

Okay, now that I've gone over the funny bits, lets get to the creepy bits.

1 - They're really being outfitted pretty specifically for crowd control with “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded.”

We're talking tasers and bean-bag guns, folks.

The only reason I can think of for the army to be deployed in America with non-lethal weapons is if they expect to be using them on Americans.

So that's creepy thing number one. Instead of your local police force or state national guard unit being called in to deal with civil unrest, it could be an army unit under the command of the president.

And this is happening right before the election. They deploy October 1st. I'm less of a conspiracy theorist than I used to be, but this creeps me out.

2 - Another creepy thing is that the Army Times article keeps referring to The Homeland; "homeland defense" and "homeland mission" and "homeland scenarios", instead of much more typical military jargon like "domestic operation" or "stateside deployment" or "domestic incident".

For the record, I hate the word "homeland". I would really, really prefer that the DHS was the Department of Domestic Security or somesuch. "Homeland" is just so Orwellian.

3 - One more creepy thing: All of this is against the law.

One of the last acts of the Republican congress before the 2006 elections was a modification to the Insurrection Act of 1807 (as part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill, also known as the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007). Basically this gave the president the ability to deploy the armed forces domestically if he saw fit.

The good news is that this ability was taken away again in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The Insurrection Act was changed back to its original wording.

The bad news is that when Bush 43 signed the act into law he did so while accompanying it with a signing statement that says:

• "Today, I have signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The Act authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, for military construction, and for national security-related energy programs.
• Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.
• GEORGE W. BUSH
• THE WHITE HOUSE,
• January 28, 2008."

As with many presidential signing statments, it is unclear if the president believes he is actually constrained in any meaningful way by the law he is signing.

Oh well. Welcome Sea Smurfs!

Interesting Times

The economy is on the rocks. McCain is suspending his campaign and possibly skipping the first debate (can he DO that?). The Chinese are releasing news articles about their successful manned mission that hasn't started yet. Whatever way you slice it, we live in interesting times.

And it could get more interesting still. Check this out.

Yup, it's a completely plausible scenario - based on current polling data - in which the presidential election is an electoral tie.

Because life just isn't interesting enough yet.

The Volt II

They've changed the look of the Volt. It used to look like the batmobile:
Now it looks a bit more like a Prius:
I think overall it's a good change. They need to strike a delicate balance. It didn't look utilitarian enough before. Now, though, it looks so utilitarian as to be unremarkable. The Volt needs to be distinctive. Maybe a big lightning-bolt paint job?

One of the things about the Prius is that it's instantly recognizable as a Prius and therefore as a hybrid. It's a vocal hybrid.

The Volt needs to be a vocal plug-in...

Got it! Instead of a lightning-bolt paint job, they should have a cord with a plug on the end. This is a quick sketch:

Freakanomics for real

It's been an interesting month, economically speaking. I have to admit that I don't fully understand all that has happened with Lehman Bros, AIG, and Fannie and Freddie.

I'm comforted by two things:

• Steven D. Levitt - author of Freakanomics - admits he doesn't fully understand, either.
• He knows people who do, and they have authored a guest post on Levitt's Freakanomics blog that attempts to explain it all.

It's certainly worth a read.

Electric Car Factories

BBC News continues to rock. Thanks to them I know that Tesla Motors is moving forward on its sedan, and is placing its factory for the sedan in San Jose, California. Evidently San Jose is the place to be if you want to be green.

This reminded me of another electric car factory that's being built here in America: In Kentucky.

Kentucky is not known for being particularly green. It may not be the most red of the red states, but it's pretty darn red. Still, it looks like some effort is being made to be green-friendly. Laws in Kentucky are being modified to allow low-speed electric vehicles on the road.

The car they're planning to manufacture in Kentucky - the Zap Alias - is going to be odd-looking, as electric cars tend to be:

If Hillary won't speak, SNL will do it for her

I love this! I've been wondering where Hillary was, and evidently so have the guys at Saturday Night Live.

So they are speaking for her. And it's funny. Check it out.

Do Facts Matter?

Here's an AP article on the fact that both campaigns tend to stretch the truth in places.

If we, as a country, could agree on the facts of a situation then we probably still wouldn't agree on how to address that situation, but we could at least understand the other side's point of view.

As it is we just think the other side is crazy, because they actually believe what they've been told by their media.

I don't know how to fix this. I don't want a single media entity deciding what is and isn't true, but having divergent media outlets appears to have resulted in divergent views of reality.

Does anyone out there have a suggestion? How can we find out what's true?

It seems like organizations like FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting - are good in theory, but I look at their site and it seems to be more critical of McCain than of Obama.

Is this because McCain's campaign is more worthy of criticism? Or is FAIR biased?

FAIR watches the watchmen, but who makes sure FAIR is fair?

Stock Madness

After 2 days of falling stock prices in which my stocks lost about 10% of their value, they're suddenly back up where they were. I don't see any positive news about Lehman. I see further, negative news about WaMu. So what changed?

I mean, I'm glad my stocks are doing well again, but one wants to know WHY.

The problem is that there's no actual logic to the market, or at least very little. It's lemmings running this way yelling "Sell!" followed by lemmings running that way yelling "Buy!"

Theoretically the falling market has caused low-enough prices that bargain-hunters are buying, causing the lemmings to run the other way, but still. Is it just going to fall again on Monday? Or in an hour?

Where's Hillary?

Well, as many of you may have noticed I have become more vocal, politically. This started with my original post on Palin - in which I was impressed by how she appeared to have been created for her role as vice-presidential candidate this year. More (and more accurate) information on Palin came out at the same time that some very baffling rumor-mongering was going on. I posted on these things separately. My post about the rumors was, possibly, just more rumor-mongering. My post on the Bridge to Nowhere was more clear, I hope. Admittedly, I compared her unfavorably to Dick Cheney in that one...

What's interesting is that Google Ads, looking at my content, seemed to think that my blog was frequented by McCain-Palin supporters (if my family reads this blog then possibly it is...) and several ads for their campaign then appeared.

So I wrote an Obama article. It appears to have balanced back out a bit.

The presidential election is certainly the topic of greatest interest to me just now, although Wall Street's current melt-down is a close second.

These topics will run together, eventually, I am certain.

For now, though, I'm an Obama-supporter on the sidelines, having lots of Kerry flashbacks.

And today I found myself thinking: Where's Hillary?

Who could best respond to Palin's attacks on Obama? Who could best reach out to women voters and say "A vote for Palin is a vote against everything I believe," ?

So where is she? Does she actually care about the country? Or is she going to sit this out, let McCain have his turn, and then wait for 2012?

And for that matter, where's Biden? Why is a man famous for running his mouth off failing to do so at this critical juncture?

The Obama campaign is going on the attack. And they're attacking McCain, which is appropriate, as he's the other person running for president. The attacks are still high-road, which I appreciate on some fundamental level.

But shouldn't we be seeing more surrogates? Why aren't we?

Obama keeps to the high road

Obama shares an unfortunate tendency toward long-windedness with John Kerry. When asked by Keith Olbermann about 527 groups and why the Obama camp isn't using such groups to attack the McCain campaign, Obama rambled for a bit, saying a few things that hinted at but failed to make his overall point.

In the midst of his answer Obama said that he's "confidant that the american people are going to say to themselves 'Do we want to keep doing the same thing or do we want something new?'" and "By the time this thing is over the contrast is gonna be clear. The American people are going to make the choice for a new direction for the country..."

Now maybe I'm reading into his answer, but it seems to me that what he was trying to say was something like:

• We're promising change to the American people. And we're delivering. We're not just going to do things differently after the election. We're doing things differently now.
• Instead of swift-boating people, we're talking about the issues. Instead of getting distracted by the things that don't matter, we're talking about the things that do.
• We're running a different kind of campaign. And I trust the American people to see the difference in what we offer.

I hope he's right.

The Bridge to Nowhere and the Flip-Flop to the spotlight

Sarah Palin was for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it.

Even after the decision was made not to build the bridge, Alaska kept federal government money originally earmarked for the project.

In addition to the Anchorage Daily News, here’s a link from CNN, and another to a Reuters article on Yahoo!

Oh, and speaking of news from Alaska, a few more items:

First, it’s coming to light that Sarah Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, was interested in the possibility of removing books from the town library, although the specific books she hoped to remove are unknown. When the head librarian stated emphatically that she was against the idea of removing books from the library, Sarah Palin tried – and failed – to fire her. Here’s another Anchorage Daily News article.

Second, the same article references a letter from a concerned Alaskan about Sarah Palin that is currently traveling through the blogosphere.

Third, the AP has a story that may or may not become more interesting. Evidently Sarah Palin switched colleges 6 times in 6 years.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but the conclusion at which I’m arriving is that there’s something strange, secretive, and unpredictable about Sarah Palin. We’ve had 8 years of a strange, secretive and unpredictable vice president. We don’t need 4 more.

McCain’s Katrina, or maybe McCain's Eagleton

The Sarah Palin saga continues, and it’s riveting. I find myself flipping between the news channels for the latest, just as I did in 2005 watching Katrina unfold. I also find myself wishing the news media would go ahead and declare the Gustav story over and done so they can devote themselves completely to all things Sarah Palin.

But of course the Gustav story is not completely over. Evacuees from New Orleans have been ordered to stay away for now, although Mayor Nagin promises they are just days – not weeks – away from returning. Gustav did cause a lot of damage, and it will take some time to see if New Orleans will survive, even though it was spared the full brunt of Gustav’s fury.

But I want my Sarah Palin! And my wish will be granted, it appears. It appears that there are at least a couple different things going on with Sarah and her family. One of them is fairly straightforward. One of them isn’t.

What’s straightforward is that Sarah’s daughter Bristol is pregnant. In a manner reminiscent of an earlier time, Bristol has been living with an aunt in Anchorage, and attending high school there.

This is a family matter and does not directly belong in the electoral spotlight.

What does belong in the electoral spotlight: Sarah Palin supports abstinence-only education programs. What are the facts regarding abstinence-only education? Does it work, as measured by number of pregnant teens or lack thereof? This is something I would love to see the media run with. I’d love to see the facts regarding abstinence-only education presented coherently to the American people.

Meanwhile, there’s something else going on with the Palins, something less straightforward. And it’s leading to rumors. Those rumors have led to the press release regarding Bristol’s pregnancy. Whenever the rumors are mentioned in the press they are attributed to “liberal blogs” but seldom are more specifics given.

The Daily Kos is an Obama-supporting unapologetically liberal blog. I’ve not had occasion to read it prior to yesterday, although I’ve been aware of it.

Check that. According to my browser history I have read a few stories on the DailyKos before:

• One is questioning the notion that Obama’s supposed liberalism is a negative.
• Another is about FISA legislation, and then I’ve read an additional comment lamenting Obama’s vote for the FISA legislation. (Obama voted for a version of the FISA bill that gave telecom companies immunity from prosecution for helping the government spy on American citizens, even though he had previously threatened to filibuster any such bill.)
• Yet another Kos URL in my browser is about the fact that electing democrats to congress in 2006 had not had much of an effect on the direction in which the country was going in 2007.

My point is that I’ve been aware of the Daily Kos, and have generally approved of its editorial stance (if the word editorial stance can be applied to a largely self-regulating collection of bloggers) until yesterday.

The Daily Kos appears to have taken note of a number of oddities concerning Sarah Palin’s delivery of her son Trig. The Daily Kos has then come to the bewildering conclusion that the child is not Sarah’s, but is Bristol’s.

That being said, what editorial control there is at the Daily Kos appears to have exerted itself. I cannot find today the Daily Kos column that I read last night, which had insisted that these oddities / facts add up to one inescapable conclusion.

Another rumor-mongering blogger – I don’t know if he’s liberal or not – that seems to be fanning the flames is Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic.

I don’t agree with the rumors, but something strange is going on. Here are the oddities:

• When Sarah Palin announced her pregnancy in March, and stated her pregnancy was 7 months along, she didn’t look pregnant.
• Sarah Palin began leaking amniotic fluid in Dallas at approximately 4AM Central Time on the 17th of April. That is at about 1AM in Anchorage.
• After consulting by phone with her doctor in Alaska, Palin stayed in Dallas just long enough to give a keynote luncheon address.
• She flew by commercial airline to Anchorage, Alaska, with a stop in Seattle. She arrived in Anchorage at 10:30 PM local time.
• Once in Alaska her husband drove her an additional hour to their hometown medical center in Wasilla. What’s odd about this is that Anchorage hospitals are better equipped for a premature birth than the one in Wasilla. That being said, Wasilla is still counted as part of the Anchorage statistical area.
• Her family doctor – the same one who delivered her fourth child, Piper – delivered Trig at 6:30 AM on Friday the 18th of April. The doctor, incidentally, is a founder of the Sexual Assault Response Team in the Wasilla area, and also a co-founder of The Children's Place in Wasilla. Basically, the doctor is active in the area of preventing and treating child abuse and neglect.

It seems to me that the Occam’s Razor explanation of events is simple: Sarah and Todd Palin really wanted their child born in Alaska, and delivered by their family doctor. In support of this simple theory, Todd Palin has been quoted as saying "You can't have a fish picker from Texas."

There is some question of Sarah Palin’s decision making (1) in giving the keynote address in the Dallas area after her amniotic fluid began to “leak”, and (2) in flying while over 7 months pregnant and possibly in labor. Evidently it is somewhat unusual for a woman more than 7 months pregnant to fly, because of the pressure changes encountered when flying.

Maybe it's simple. Maybe it's not. Either way something a little weird is going on, and it appears that it will impact the presidential race.

Also impacting the race will be Sarah Palin's membership in a group of Alaskan Secessionists.

It looks like Sarah is going to be McCain's Katrina. If not, perhaps she'll be his Eagleton.