On McChrystal Part II

OK, I can see why McChrystal was fired. He's lucky to not get Court Martialed (Article 88 of the UCMJ) But why the hell did President Obama demote GEN Petraeus as his replacement? Petraeus was Central Command's Commander, i.e. McChrystal's boss.

Which brings up the question of who is replacing Petraeus at Central Command? For a while Lt. General Allen (USMC) will take over, but he's a three star and that's a 4 star slot. This also puts the Central Command in the some what odd position of having a 4 star general under the operation command of a 3 star general. Obama needs to get a replacement in a Central Command ASAP. Either promote LTGEN Allen (which might be tricky given that the USMC has a very limited number of full (i.e 4 star) generals (like one I recall correctly, the commandant of the Marines )) or find some under-employed 4 star that is willing to take that job, and please not a squid or a zomer.

Of course, IMAO, the correct sequence would have been fire McChrystal, brevet Allen to 4 stars (and get him confirmed by the US Senate ASAP), and assign him to AfPac commander. Among other things things, the USMC seems to have their collective shit together more in Afghanistan than the non-special forces US Army does. The USMC does have a longer (and more successful) history of "Small Wars" than the US Army does. But what do I know, I was just a SP/5 in the Army. Wait, that's more experience than Obama has...

On McChrystal

One of the most significant events in American history was when Washington surrendered his sword to the Continental Congress, establishing the firm tradition that the military is under civilian control. This is a key ingredient of a successful free society. I haven't read the Rolling Stone article, but I suspect that I would agree with many of the opinions that General McChrystal expressed. That aside, his comments can not be defended. No man is indespensible, but even if the war effort in Afghanistan would be seriously damaged, that would be less of a threat to free society than weakening the principle of civilian control of the military. The President would be justified if he fired McChrystal and probably should.

Epic something

I don't know if this is an epic win or an epic fail. It's damn sure epic, however.


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Opps The first in the series was some where else.

Things that I sort of wish would happen to Top American Leaders ™



Couple of notes just as a point of comparison. Note that, even though it's raining he's not holding an umbrella and looking silly. For that matter he doesn't look silly after the wind hits the wreath.

Also note the serious Men in Suits standing around with brief cases. You know they have some serious firepower in those cases. I like the one staring into the hedge. What was he expecting? A raccoon or squirrel to jump out and attack?

I knew there was at least one other reason to like Sandra

Sandra Bullock accepted the "Troops Choice" Award for Entertainer of The Year, which was voted on by members of the military on Spike TV's Web site.

Ignore this unless you're a MilGeek

This is probably the best thing you can do with a M47A1 in a modern combat environment. It's armor isn't thick enough to stand up to modern anti-armor weapons while it's main gun is ineffective against any thing but the lightest armored fighting vehicles.


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On the other hand, it makes a spiffy clothes line.

This is just silly.

So, where is Steve?

2nd in a series

Of things that I sort of wish would happen to Top American Leaders ™

This is the Prime Minister of Turkey, ridding a horse at some sort of cut the ribbon photo op.



Hat tip: IsraellyCool

Another person with way too much time on his hands.

If you upload a video to YouTube, then download it, then re-upload it, some changes in both the video and audio happens. This is a fact of life given that the MPEG encoding system is normally "lossey".

This is version 1


This is version 1000


Side note, only for web design people. Check the for the closing tag of the embed tags that YouTube give you when you do the "copy embed code" thing directly off of YouTube. It seems that the close embed tag is missing most of the time. If you get it off some one that has embedded it them self it seems to close. Odd, and a real pain on Blogger where it bitches at you if your tags aren't closed.

Flash on Linux

I'm starting to hate it. It crash and burns way to much, taking Firefox with it. It's gotten to the point that every time I open a terminal window I type `ps aux | grep fox` so I can see the dead process to `kill -9` with out thinking about it. Grunt. This is the first non-beta|alpha piece of software for Linux that I've had major problems with. At first I though I had a memory chip going bad or the version of Firefox I was using had a major bug. No, it's flash. It kills the Gnome web browser "Web Browser 2.22.2" and Chrome for Linux just as badly. Yeah, I know it's been out for a while, but the latest release for Ubuntu blows goats, and not the way that at least makes goats happy.

How do you get a drummer off your porch?

Pay for the pizza.

Until then check this guy out. Pay attention to the drummer starting about a minute in.

An Engishman speaking about America

Can we elect this guy to something?

See if you can spot the "snipers" before they stand up.

See if you can spot the "snipers" before they stand up. The first set are fairly easy. The second, not so much. Even when they lay back down they are hard to spot. Other than the saxophone player, who can't seem to hide his saxophone. As to the music, as neo-pop songs go it's fairly good

If you play table top RPG

This is worth your while to have a look at. If, on the other hand you just want to see pictures of Willow and Tara in their underwear, it's also worth looking at.

If you don't play RPG or want to see hot witches in their underwear, don't click on the link.

OK, I'll take your word on it.

Can I get a Spanish speaker to verify that this is in fact a pro-Israel video?

And yeah, get the brain bleach out after you watch it. It's a bit strange. Probably more so if you don't speak Spanish

Some thing to watch on Sunday nights.

Top Shot.
History channel, Sunday 10/9c.

From what I've seen on the web, it seems to be "Top Chief" with guns, knives, throwing axes, long bows and more guns. Right down to the prize money and the line "And the title of Top Chief|Shot.

Plus targets that explode. Splody is good.

First show Sunday, June 6 2010

Here is an 11 minute long preview of the show.

A totally non political post

This man has way too much time on his hands Way too much time.
These are not a photos. They are drawings made with a .5 mm pencil, and not using an eraser. I stand, or rather sit, in awe.

Changed the layout.

I really hate layouts that have a fixed width of the content. Particularly ones that are too damn small. This one works at 1024x768, it has issues at 800x600, in that some YouTube video's are just a hair too wide. Oh freaking well.

Here begins a rant: We (blogger (and web designers in general)) really shouldn't have to worry about 800x600 pixel "Super" VGA cards/monitors in 2010. If you're still using a card/monitor that limits you to 800x600 resolution use the horizontal scroll bars at the bottom of your browser and/or watch the videos on YouTube. Then get a new video card and/or monitor. Say one made this century. And while I'm at it, I really don't care if my web pages display right in Internet Explorer version 5. I'm not too worried about them displaying right in IE 6, when it gets right down to it. At work, where I do web design for a living, I have an excuse, we are a Mac shop selling to Mac people in the main. If it display right in Internet Safari or Firefox, we are good to go. Among other things the boss is never going to see it in anything but those. I do check it against all the OS X browsers once a month or so, and my minion checks it against IE 7 so if it looks good with those, that's all we care about.

Just in case any one noticed an increase in posting here, my primary blog "Why My Life Sucks" is currently off the air due to me letting my domain name expire, due to a lack of funds over the last couple of months, so I am using this one for a while.

More to come, to include more rants and raves.

They are cheating

While funny and some what absurd, they are cheating here. Those tones aren't DTMF. (Dual Tone Multi Freqency) aka TouchTones. The fact that I can tell this sort of bothers me, but I'll chalk it up to to damn many years working telcom.

Arhhh!

On the Video's below do the "watch on YouTube" thing, because our freaking layout is too damn narrow to show them right. Going to fix that in my copious free time.

Update: Width issues fixed. You can watch them here.

On a semi non political note

This guy is funny. And speaks truth to power, or something like that.

Too bad I don't like either company's dounuts

Or I would have totally done this.

Israeli Tea party?

Seems like Israel should take something from the Tea Party movement. This seems like a winner to me. If and when there is a Tea Party in "medium sized city", this would be the flag I would carry.

Big Brass Ones.

As the LawDog says "That right there is a young man with a set of big brass ones." I say he's pretty brave waving an Israeli flag in LA, never mind at a Hamas demonstration. The LAPD did look like they were ready and willing to knock the crap out of any of the Hamas sympathizers that did any thing but yell at the guy. Allah Akbar my ass.