Category: News

A lot of thoughtful, or perhaps only mostly thoughtful, people turn the discussion of the latest Osama bin Laden tape into an indictment of the impotence of the American military or allude to a possible conspiracy involving either the capture of bin Laden or allowing bin Laden to remain free to serve as a boogie man to justify the overreach of a warmongering neoconservative president. Why can’t the greatest military on the planet find one man?

I have two words to rebut any conspiracy theory: Eric Robert Rudolph.

For those of you who don’t remember, Eric Robert Rudolph is the fellow who bombed the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Law enforcement identified Eric Robert Rudolph as a suspect in an Alabama abortion clinic bombing on February 14, 1998. Rudolph went on the run and hid out on the fringes of a mountain town in North Carolina and was finally arrested on May 31, 2003.

Let’s dwell on that for a moment: From the time Rudolph was named as a suspect and the search began in earnest, 5 years, 3 months, and 17 days passed. The FBI was conducting its manhunts through the woods and mountains of North Carolina and the southeast, using local guides and local law enforcement when possible, to comb and canvas the area with vigor. An area within the boundaries of the United States, peopled with Americans.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, at which point Osama bin Laden beat his retreat to Pakistan or wherever. Between then and now, 4 years and 3 months have elapsed, and the American military has not found him. For those paying any attention and trying to gain any perspective, bin Laden is rumored to be hiding on Pakistani soil. That is, he is not on ground controlled by American soldiers; indeed, the remote region where he’s supposed to be hiding (or have hidden until his death) is populated with people who don’t like Americans and wouldn’t help if they could (some, though, would say the same about Murphy, North Carolina, but it’s futile to try to talk with someone likes equate Christian fundamentalists with tribal Muslims in Pakistan).

The American military, and American law enforcement, are not omnipotent, no matter how loud the civil libertarians shriek about any advance in data-gathering or surveillance technology. Unfortunately, the American psyche believes them to be so. I think of it as the Star Trek effect: When we’re confronted with fictional representations (like 24 or Tom Clancy) of the military’s climactic successes, we tend to adjust our expectations to meet them. (I call it the Star Trek effect because science fiction has sometimes lulled us into not remembering how dangerous space flight really is currently.) If the military cannot pull bin Laden out of a cave after 42 minutes of prime time television, it’s failing….or it’s a cliffhanger leading to a suspenseful twist about the mole in the agency at the highest levels who is thwarting the effort or is misleading the American people.

We’re not so far from the world where Nazi fugitives hid for decades at the edges of the civilized world, and we’re not far at all from a world where a lone bomber in America can hide in the woods overlooking town for half a decade before a lucky break lands him in jail. Wherever Osama bin Laden is, if he’s alive, he’s still on the run, and if the American military and world law enforcement remains vigilant, we’ll catch him eating out of a Save-a-Lot dumpster sooner or later.

Man accused of using credit card of star NFL quarterback:

Phoenix man was arrested Thursday after allegedly using a credit card account belonging to Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre more than 40 times, authorities said.

Some Green Bay fans will go to extraordinary measures to ensure that Favre does not retire, including ensuring that he needs the paycheck to pay his credit card bills.

Doubtlessly, radio call-in shows in Wisconsin are now figuring this into their calculations about whether he will return next year.

Another camera-based security triumph in Great Britain: Peeping tom CCTV workers jailed:

Two council CCTV camera operators have been jailed for spying on a naked woman in her own home.

Mark Summerton and Kevin Judge, from Sefton Council, Merseyside, trained a street camera into the woman’s flat.

Good on the bobbies for ensuring the boobies were natural and not semtex implants.

Lohan, Moss’ pole dance at topless bar:

New B.F.F.’s Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss shook things up at New York’s Scores strip club in the wee hours of yesterday morning putting on a bump-and-grind pole-dancing session for the club’s 400 shocked patrons, reports the New York Post’s gossip column ‘Page Six.’

Lohan, Moss and a few of their female friends descended upon the topless club just before 3:00 a.m. and went directly into the club’s famous Champagne Room, where the group downed a number of vodka shots, raspberry Kamikazes and beer and were treated to plenty of lapdances from the strippers that surrounded their table.

As other Savvis investors remember, this is where Rob McCormick spent $240,000, prompting his ouster as the CEO of the plucky little ISP that couldn’t quite.

Mexico Demands U.S. Allow More Immigration:

Diplomats from Mexico and Central America on Monday demanded guest worker programs and the legalization of undocumented migrants in the United States, while criticizing a U.S. proposal for tougher border enforcement.

Meeting in Mexico’s capital, the regional officials pledged to do more to fight migrant trafficking, but indirectly condemned a U.S. bill that would make illegal entry a felony and extend border walls.

“Migrants, regardless of their migratory status, should not be treated like criminals,” they said.

No doubt, the undocumented workers and migrants within our country would elect you to be our leaders. Too bad we’re a soveriegn country whose actual citizens get to elect our own feckless leaders.

Judge Alito, assuming that your wife were raped by Satan and impregnated, would you not then support abortion? Indeed, would you not, for the betterment of mankind and service to God, use a spoon and a penlight yourself to rid this world of the demon spawn, even if your wife were in her third trimester?

Owen of Boots and Sabers wants the government to do business behind closed doors.

Face it, someone was going to call him a hypocrite. I just wanted to do it gently, and from a homie.

for this story: Republicans say they have fixed economy if the legislature or government had been in the hands of Democrats?

Oh, yeah, it would be stacked with numbers and facts about how the economy had improved, instead of merely quotes from Republicans claiming the economy had improved.

But numbers are hard, and aspersively parroting is easy.

Pete Townshend Warns IPod Users:

Guitarist Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that they could end up with hearing problems as bad as his own if they don’t turn down the volume of the music they are listening to on earphones.

Surely, it was the headphones, not playing guitar in front of large stacks of amps and monitors for decades.

Rest assured: somewhere, somehow, a crack team of expert conspiracy theorists tonight are finding a way to blame Ariel Sharon’s stroke on the Jews.

Jack Abramoff makes the black trenchcoat and fedora look bad.

Note to self: Continue belt cinched around expanding belly abstinence. Also, don’t bribe congressional representatives.

U.S. Toll for Year in Iraq Nears ’04 Mark:

Bombings and shootings killed at least 20 people across Iraq on the final day of the year Saturday, while U.S. troops shivered in the cold during a performance by an “American Idol” singer as part of New Year’s Eve celebrations. The U.S. military also reported the death of an American soldier from wounds, bringing its death toll in Iraq for 2005 near last year’s record level.

I would say, “Give me a break,” but Associated Press is not doing us any favors. Let’s recap the timeline:

2003: The United States invades in late March and faces an enemy that largely surrenders. US faces 9 months of combat and occupancy.
2004: The first full year of occupation, and the year which the “record” was set.
2005: The second full year of occupation, and the year in which the record is almost matched.

There you have it; a record of long-standing. Well, we Americans are told that we’re always hungering for the bigger and better things all the time, with baseball players chasing home run records every year and whatnot. I guess Associated Press is just trying to feed our interest in meeting or exceeding records every year, even if it has to manufacture those records out of whole cloth.

Anti-Christian Jeans Are a Trend in Sweden:

Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.

Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he’s not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.

“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Atldax told The Associated Press. “I’m not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”

Active statements against religions whose adherents regularly stab those who make active statements against it or whose adherents routinely blow up innocent commuters remain strangely absent.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)