Fish Fear Me

It's Spring!

The view from my kitchen this morning:

So far it looks like about 4" of very wet snow at my place with maybe twice as much in the south metro. It's not exactly an uncommon occurrence for this time of the year in the Twin Cities and I kind of like it. It covered up the dirty and nasty looking snow piles that hadn't melted yet and it's not like it's going to stay around for too long either. It did make for a nasty commute in some spots this morning though.

It's still a little early to be watching for "ice out" this year. The ice went off the lakes in my area around 4/3 last year and I'm guessing we will be back to average this year, which is around 4/11. But that's only a little over two weeks away, it's coming despite this little blast of winter. Spring fever is starting to set in and it doesn't help when my friend Rob starts posting pics like these from his place in Louisiana. I'm even inspired now to think about a vegetable garden this year.

If I'm going to do that I better get cracking, even though last frost isn't usually until May around here. If I'm going to grow tomatoes from seed I'm going to have to start those in the next couple of weeks. I don't suppose there are online garden planners now...why yes, of course there are. It looks like at least some are free and I'm going to check out the Better Homes and Gardens one. Any other suggestions?

More Muddled Thoughts

I have some deep thoughts, deep I tell you, on the whole Obama and race issue. Unfortunately, each time I've sat down to write about it all I get is a puddle. Too much of "on the other hand" adds up to just muddled thoughts and not deep ones.

I didn't watch his speech on Tuesday, but I have read the transcript/prepared remarks three times. I think there are parts of it that were quite good, parts that were not so good(to be polite), and one part that made me laugh out loud. Since my thoughts on the first two are still a mess, I'll just focus on the latter for now.

I haven't seen anyone else drill into this, but in the long run I think it's one of the most interesting things Obama said on Tuesday:

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

Correct me if I am wrong, but haven't most major urban areas been under Democratic control for what, almost 40 years? Certainly the home base of Rev. Wright, Chicago, has been. Is Obama saying that those conditions still exist or that they existed way back when and now, after two generations, government still has been unable to solve these problems? Aren't Democrats the ones running those inferior schools? And yet somehow they keep getting voted into office. I'm shocked.

And note also that line about "meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations". The most meaningful wealth that any working American could give to his children is likely to be retirement savings. Except for most Americans, 6.2% of their income, matched by their employer, goes into a government retirement plan that they do not own and cannot pass on to their children. Could it be that Obama secretly believes that Social Security should be privatized?

No, I'm pretty sure that he doesn't. In taking a look at Reverend Wright and Trinity Church, I came to the conclusion that the anti-Americanism and racism were just symptoms of the real disease. Deep down Obama and Rev. Wright are "progressives". If you take race out of the equation, what Wright said is no different than what you can get, to one degree or another, at any any of the netroot blogs. Obama has successfully masked that until now, but the mask slipped a little bit in the last couple of weeks.

If Obama truly wishes to address the plight of Black America he's going to have to confront the failure of urban and Democratic led government policy among other things. At least two generations of failure at both the national and local level. If he has the courage to do that in the coming months and secures the nomination, he just might be able to win my vote after all.

I'm not holding my breath.

More: Here's what I mean when I think that we miss the boat if we look at this issue from just a racial perspective. Rev. Wright's perspective is Afrocentric, but his beliefs are simply standard hard left dogma in many ways. Look at this from Tim Wise:

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Or this from David Neiwert:

It's telling that none of them also observed that, for the most part, Wright's remarks (aside from his conspiracist comments about AIDS, which were indeed inexcusable, but which received little or no play before Obama's speech) were factually accurate, and deeply reflective of a reality that most African Americans live with -- and which most white Americans do their best to ignore, deny, and forget. The remarks that were broadcast all over YouTube and replayed endlessly on the cable talk shows were, no doubt, were impolitic, but they were also largely true.

Wright, Wise, and Neiwert are all fellow travelers regardless of race. The larger question for me is; just how comfortable Sen. Obama is with their political perspective and their view of America? If we get distracted by race and ignore that, we may be in for a rude shock one these days.

Poundin' on the Spitz

If this isn't a wooden stake in the undead heart of Eliot Spitzer then nothing will be:

SPITZER HAS USED HOOKERS FOR 10 YEARS: SOURCES

Disgraced Gov. Spitzer dropped up to $80,000 on sex with prostitutes, sources revealed tonight.

Spitzer, a millionaire, was hopping into bed with harlots for as long as 10 years and traveled as far as Florida for call-girl trysts, sources said.

If that is true then it ought to be the end of his public "service" life. Some people can bleat all they want about supposed conspiracies to get him, but if that article is true it means the SOB was prosecuting people for providing the same services he was making use of himself at the same time. That folks, is a major league asshole.

I got home from work tonight and saw a clip on the local news of Minnesota's Attorney General, Mike Hatch, saying Spitzer's conduct was(to paraphrase) "so out of character". I don't think so. I think it really shows his true character.

It's the same sort of character that "progressives" showed when they ruled the USSR for 70 years. The same character that the "progressives" who rule mainland China show to this day. It's the same character of the late Fidel Castro. Like all of those "progressives", Spitzer doesn't use the law as a structure for civilization, but as a weapon to be used ruthlessly against political enemies. Law that applies to others, but not himself. Make no mistake, his apologists feel exactly the same way.

I don't want to see him do a perp walk and I haven't read anyone yet who does, though I'm sure they are out there. I just want him to go away and never again return to public life.

Just. Go. Away.

(Oh, wait. I almost forgot...Mr. Spitzer? If you could also serve for the foreseeable future as a lesson on abject thugs and the fate they are doomed to, that would be swell. Thanks.)

So This Is Spitzmas

It's wrong to take pleasure in the problems of others...It's wrong to take pleasure in the problems of others...It's wrong to take pleasure in the problems of others...

But oh my, this time it's really, really, tough not to:

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.

The wiretap captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

Well. Mr. "Steamroller" appears to have taken a major hit. Sorry, but as they say, "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy". Spitzer gets Spitzered. There is a God and he has one heck of a sense of humor.

I can't believe he hasn't already resigned. It's one thing to be confronted with moral hypocrites who show their all too human failings. I rarely take heed of their moralizing in the first place, so their downfalls really don't matter that much to me either. Here's a man though, who built a career moralizing about all sorts of things...and then sending people to jail. In fact, it appears he has sent people to jail for providing the very services that he is alleged to have procured for himself. If true, that is a disgrace.

It is not a case of, as Taylor Marsh says here, "...the magnitude of the hypocrisy involved is not any different from the average guy getting caught". Yeah, it is different. You see, the average guy can't throw other average guys in jail. And if the average guy indulges in that kind of behavior he may find himself subjected to blackmail, but that blackmail is not likely to involve "trivial" things like, oh I don't know, state business. Last but not least, when I first heard this I assumed it was a one-off thing. That is clearly not the case as the complaint against the prostitution ring says that Spitzer had credit left from at least one previous uh, session, and he left money with the prostitute for future "sessions". Obviously he has taken the "Two Americas" schtick to heart. It's just that in his America it's OK to hire hookers.

I feel for his family. I can't seem to work up a tear for Mr. Steamroller himself. He's a bully who has relished using the law as a club to advance his "progressive" agenda and he is a prime example of what we can look forward to if we don't stop the criminalization of just about everything. I take no pleasure in his personal pain, but it is good to see his ilk hoist on their own petard once in a while.

Oh good. Dan Collins spreads the word that it's Whine Spitzers for everyone over at Socks' place.

More: There are a few good links for background on Spitzer(and why I dislike the man) at Stephen Bainbridge's blog. That link led me to this good essay on Spitzer's modus operandi. Then there's this post that seems particularly apt today.

And I know I have an odd sense of humor, but stuff like this makes me chuckle when I notice it:

"You don't change governors of New York lightly, and I think it would be a mistake to act precipitously," political consultant Joseph Mercurio told CBS 2.

I disagree on that, but maybe that just means I'm mercurial, and of course, he's not.

And one more: Via Michael Goldfarb, something by John C. Whitehead that I remember reading on OpinionJournal.com a couple of years ago. An excerpt:

Since there have been rumors in the media as to what happened next, I feel I must now set the record straight. After reading my op-ed piece, Mr. Spitzer tried to phone me. I was traveling in Texas but he reached me early in the afternoon. After asking me one or two questions about where I got my facts, he came right to the point. I was so shocked that I wrote it all down right away so I would be sure to remember it exactly as he said it. This is what he said:

"Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot. I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done. You will wish you had never written that letter."

(Welcome fellow Protein Wisdom readers. Feel free to look around. Thanks for the link, Dan.)

3/12: And he's out of there. Good. I feel for his wife and kids though. In the meantime, as a public service I hopped over to Socks' place to catch his reaction. So you don't have to. It can be neatly summed up in a visual:

Standing Up-March 2008

The March updates to the Iraqi Security Forces Order of Battle are available now at The Long War Journal. Additional ISF units continue to come online and receive equipment.

I also point you to this Pentagon press briefing from March 4th by Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of the Coalition Forces that are training and equipping the ISF. Some of the highlights and challenges remaining:

• "Numbers count in this kind of war, as all of you know. Physical presence counts and the Iraqi security forces know that. They have grown in 2007 well over 100,000 in the army, air force, the navy, the police -- the national police, and most of that growth was in the period June of 2007 through December of 2007. For example, the army in 2007 grew by 60,000-plus, 42,000-plus in the last half of the year. The national police grew 8,000 in 2007, all of it in the last half of 2007. And the Iraqi police grew by about 45,000 -- a little bit less than 45,000 in 2007, 29,000 in the last half of 2007."

• "...the percentage of boots on the ground in the second half of 2007 went from mid-60s to low 80s. This is a big shift in the number of people who are actually in the army, actually on the ground in their battalions in their battle space."

• "In general, officers are -- too many in the lower ranks and too many in the higher ranks and not enough in between, and NCOs too many in the -- quite a few in the lower ranks but not enough in the higher ranks."

• "The national police have also made several qualitative improvements in their leadership. They've changed out both of their division commanders -- 10 of the nine brigade commanders -- that's correct; one brigade commander changed twice -- and 17 of their 28 battalion commanders. They're in their third cycle of training from the Italian Carabinieri leader training to increase their proficiency. This will go on for a couple of years. And the national police reform program is going pretty well."

• "...in December the minister of defense had declared that his forces would go to self- sufficiency in life support -- food, primarily, and fuel. He's doing a very good job across the board in terms of feeding themselves, had a little bit of rocky start in December and January, but now that's pretty much smoothed out, and now he's working on the fueling issue. That will take a couple of months to get that ironed out, but that part of logistics is on track, and they're progressing."

  "They have built eight of their logistics bases, eight of 13, so we have five more bases to build. That's one per division, and each logistics base has its own ammunition supply point, its own fuel point, its own maintenance facility, its own radio repair facility and its own dining facility and its own motor park. So eight of the 13 are constructed, and five are completely manned. And we're still working on the rest of them. Nine of the 12 motor transport regiments are fielded, and this is very important because each division has a motor transport regiment, except for the mechanized division; it has a different organization. But the 12 infantry divisions have motor transport regiments, and these are large trucks, five-ton trucks, that allow the division commander to move supplies from his logistics base out to his brigades and battalions and then back and forth across his battlespace. So nine motor transport regiments fielded, and we still have three more to go."

• "The mechanic training program is also something that we've progressed at least a little bit on. They need 3,000 mechanics. They have a little bit over 1,000 now. And we think, through the period of 2008, we'll get to at least 2,000, maybe a little bit more."

• "In command and control, 12 of the 13 divisions are formed, with their signal companies, which is important because that's how they command and control".

• "On the aviation side, very important, this year we doubled the number -- almost doubled the number of pilots that we had last year. We went from flying less than 30 missions per week -- Iraqi air force missions in support of Iraqi army -- to now over 300 per week, so this is a thousand-percent increase in Iraqis' air force support to their army."

There's much more detail at the link. When you don't read about Iraq these days, this stuff is a big part of what you are not seeing. I encourage you to read the whole briefing transcript because I think it conveys not only the details, but also the complexity involved in building the ISF into a self-sustaining set of organizations. And the tremendous amount of work being done by General Dubik and the Coalition Forces under his command.

The surge has allowed the breathing room needed to make large strides in the ISF in many areas. There is still much work to do and much can happen between now and November. This is the path and the long-term effort that will allow us to disengage from day to day combat in Iraq though. Political reconciliation is also required, but without a professional ISF that will not be possible. It's absolutely essential that we understand and not short-circuit these efforts.

State of Hockey

My favorite sporting event of the year kicked off yesterday: the MSHSL Boys' Hockey Tournament. It may not always be the most technically refined hockey, they are high school kids after all, but they play pretty darn good and it's a lot of fun to watch them. More fun than watching the NHL as far as I'm concerned. In fact, if I lived out of state and couldn't get the games on tv I'd probably go ahead and spend the $50 and watch them online.

It's also a chance to see some of the best high school players in the state. As I write this the returning champs, the Roseau Rams, are thumping their opponent 5 6-0 in the second period. There's a kid on that team named Aaron Ness who is someone to keep an eye on. He's trying to finish both his junior and senior requirements this year so he can play for the Minnesota Gophers next year. In the first period I watched him take the puck most of the length of the ice and then fake both a defenseman and the goalie to the ice and calmly put the puck in the net. The kid is good. His size may be an issue as he moves up in his career, but we'll see what happens when he gets to the college level.  I'm just glad he has decided to go to the U of M.

I rarely have a team that I root for to win it all. The high school I went to is in Minneapolis and the condition of hockey in the city public schools there is pathetic. I don't think my old school even has its own team anymore. Some years I'll start rooting for a team after a particularly gutsy victory, but that's rare. Mostly I just love the enthusiasm that's natural at that age and the freewheeling games. Hockey as it should be, IMHO.

Fallon All Over Him

Thomas P.M. Barnett has an interesting article in the latest Esquire on the commander of Centcom, Admiral William J. Fallon. Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post describes the tone of it as "glowing". When I read it late last night the mental image that came to mind was more like this:

Except Barnett isn't hiding in a podium. If you can get past Barnett's BDS and his apparent man-crush on Fallon though, there is some interesting perspective on one of the most important leaders in the US military right now. The article has far more direct quotes from Fallon than any piece I've read(other than testimony before Congress).

The netroots is particularly abuzz about this part of the article:

...well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

It's tough to say how true that is. In the Ricks article, Fallon pushes back a bit on how Barnett has portrayed him:

Asked about the article yesterday, Fallon called it "poison pen stuff" that is "really disrespectful and ugly." He did not cite specific objections.

Perhaps we'll get some clarification in the next few days. One thing I was pleased to see was Fallon's forceful denial of the whole "chickenshit" incident with Petraeus from last fall:

Last fall, it was reported in the press that Fallon had called General Petraeus an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" for being so willing to serve as the administration's political frontman on the Iraq surge. The old man had told reporters that it hadn't happened like that--that that's not the way he operates, and, in fact, any time he talks with Petraeus, there are only two men in the room--the admiral and the general--and their exchanges remain private. And when they're not in the same room, "We e-mail each other constantly and talk by phone just about every day." Just the two of them, he says. No outsiders observing. The press sources had an overactive imagination, Fallon said. Now when the subject comes up, he dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

"Absolute bullshit," Fallon tells me.

Good, and I'll take his word for it. As much as the antiwar crowd gibbered with glee over it, I think more serious people would look on that kind of behavior as a sign of incompetence. And Fallon doesn't strike me as an incompetent man. I may not agree with everything he says here, but reasonable people can disagree and on many issues there are different schools of thought in the military on what to do. That's a good thing up until the civilian leadership makes a decision. That's the thing I'm most uncomfortable with when it comes to Admiral Fallon and I'm not certain, even after this article, what Fallon would do if/after the decision is made to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Would he resign in protest? Maybe, but after reading Barnett's article I'm actually less sure of that than I was before.

Barnett and others portray Fallon as the man who could prevent an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear weapon development. Barnett asks at the beginning of the article " Who will prevail, the president or the admiral"? Well, I got the answer to that one, and it's pretty easy: The President. If you think differently then you have an odd perspective on military-civilian power arrangements in this country. If you read the article closely, I don't think Fallon has that odd perspective either. It sounds to me that he has a vision of what he needs to do and Bush is letting him do it. There's a lot of sniping from other quarters in the administration, but is that a shock or something? At times he is reined in a little, but it also looks like he is given a lot of rope when it comes to his area of responsibility.

The upshot is that it's an interesting article if you can get past the bias and other nonsense from the author. My take from it is that Fallon is not quite the hero that the left wants to portray him as. He's being given a chance to drive things in Centcom and that is a considerable task. The best that those of us who are outside the loop can do is wish him well and remember to take what you read about Admiral Fallon with a grain of salt.