THE CAT’S PAWS

Bailing anybody out is generally a bad idea. It creates a feeling in the ‘bailed’ that he/she can get away from whatever he/she did wrong to get him in the jam he/she found him/herself in the first place. Unless things have changed since my college days when I learned this, criminal offenders are repeat offenders not just some of the time, but MOST of the time.

But I’m not saying that a newly-bailed-out goliath insurance company has been run and essentially mismanaged by shady characters. Not in this post, anyway. (more…)

The National Arctic Refuge vicinity along Prudhue’s solid-ice bay being where it is and all, the oil industry’s surge of drilling activities are not really going to be really visible to anybody. Gradually, then more quickly, more and more rail cars and trailers will haul piping, beam, cable, pumps, generators, cutting tools, a zillioin fasteners…and our oil interdependence efforts will be off and running. (more…)

I’m barely old enough to remember how it used to be; George McGovern was on the radio a couple of weeks ago to share how pivital party conventions were. Essentially, the party bosses worked it all out on the floor, and primaries meant something, true, but the convention was for all the marbles. Sen (ret) McGovern was glad things all changed after his ‘72 bid against Nixon.

Partly from an enlightenment that befell American voters, and partly because of chaotic upheaval that showed it could usurp a party’s ‘coming out’ of it’s candidate by delaying nominations until well after prime time, primaries have permanently taken the role of party candidate selection. Ordinary folks, not back room deals, now had the voice. (more…)

It’s been pending now for a while and bound to happen. The Afghanistan theater, until now a secondary concern to Iraq, is moving to the front of American focus. The country is near-ancient and its infrastructure more so, and as such reporters can’t embed in what’s today’s relative finery of Baghdad’ press support and seek out their stories to write and share. As such, our coverage and view of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan—in which there’s no such amenities (there’s essentially zero in areas that aren’t within military bases) with which to operate—is far more speculative than are eye-witness accounts by hundreds of correspondents filing the dozens of stories every day from Baghdad. (more…)

This is biting off a lot to chew, but I’ll take a stab at it. Our troops have been in Iraq for awhile now, and it’s never NOT a very complex picture to sort through. I choose to believe that along, our government has been steering its lumbering wheels toward reality–not relative to whether or not to pull out, but toward a full view of the reality of the Iraqi political landscape. It isn’t teetering any more than our presence is, and the final outcome isn’t in political or in military hands of either side. I’m going to stick with only a few points in a political focus–IRAQI politics vs/with OUR political objectives, and like everybody else, let events be the colors that will shade and shape the future. (more…)

The account of a recent email, apparently written by a colonel in the Army, is one I’m afraid I can’t support. By now forwarded to probably a good million American PC’s, his account/message states that a candidate was aloof and selfishly non-commital. In support of the efforts and sacrafice of BOTH presidential candidates, I’ll defend the democrat just as I would the republican one if he were under fire. I believe the allegation is bogus, so I’ll rebut it with truth and the comfort that truth delivers. (more…)