After months of listening to conservatives caterwaul over deficits and health care, senior House Democrats want a graduated surtax on individuals and corporations to pay for another big drain on the treasury: the Afghanistan war.
Three full committee chairmen — including the House’s top tax writer, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) — are backing the initiative together with the chair of the party caucus, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), and close allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The deep hostility of Britain’s senior military commanders in Iraq towards their American allies has been revealed in classified Government documents leaked to the Daily Telegraph.
By Andrew Gilligan, 22 Nov 2009
In the papers, the British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J.K.Tanner, described his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” for whom “dialogue is alien,” saying: “Despite our so-called ‘special relationship,’ I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.”
Col Tanner’s boss, the top British commander in the country, Major General Andrew Stewart, told how he spent “a significant amount of my time” “evading” and “refusing” orders from his US superiors. …
Lethal Weapon: Islamist Perfidy or Western Naivety?
by Raymond Ibrahim, Pajamas Media, November 23, 2009
The narrator’s enthusiastic talk of NYPD brass standing in awe of the “cadences of the call” makes it difficult to discern exactly which verse is being recited. Only the last few words — qawm al-kaffirin, “nation of infidels” — are crystal clear, raising red flags. Thanks to my trusty Arabic Koranic concordance, I have placed this phrase as part of Koran 2:286, which supplicates Allah “to make us [Muslims] victorious over the nation of infidels.” Bear in mind that, from an Islamist point of view, the United States is the “nation of infidels” par excellence.
And there it is: From an American president who publicly defines his mission by quoting a jihadi-related verse, to American-Muslim leaders who publicly pray for the subjugation of non-Muslims (in the middle of an NYPD auditorium, no less), it is clear that the ultimate threat comes more from Western carelessness and indifference — in a word, naivety — than it does from active Islamist machinations. In short, Islamists peddling misleading interpretations for the word “jihad” is but the very tip of the iceberg.
The head of the Russian navy has said that a Mistral-class vessel could put as many troops in Georgia in 40 minutes as the Russian Black Sea Fleet took 26 hours to land during the nations' August 2008 war. Moscow declared the Russian-allied breakaway Georgian territory of Abkhazia an independent nation after the war and sent thousands of troops there. Russia, Georgia and Ukraine all have Black Sea coastlines, as does Abkhazia.
Phi Beta Iota: Berto Jongman flagged this from the Small Wars Journal. It is consistent with our own earlier diagnosis of Cognitive Dissonance, and we recommend it be read in its entirety. At the link below can be found a link to the original slide show. The author stresses the reasonable gravity of the conflict between being a Muslim and being asked to kill other Muslims, and while he avoids recommending a policy, we do not. DoD has been culturally ignorant for too long. It's time we brought both DoD human resource management and DoD counterintelligence into the 21st Century. See also:
GS a short? And five reasons we hate Goldman Sachs
Cody Willard November 19, 2009
Here are five reasons why we want Goldman Sachs destroyed and buried so we can dance on its grave and why these crony apologists are wrong when they say that the “populist outrage at Goldman Sachs is misplaced”.
1. The AIG bailout was a covert bailout of Goldman and we want our money back.
2. Goldman became a “financial holding company” after it became a “bank holding company”after it realized it was going to be insolvent even after it got Stephen Friedman to write them a $13 billion check from AIG funded with taxpayer money.
As you watch this airplane, look at the canards moving along side of, and just below the canopy rail. The “canards” are the small wings forward of the main wings? The smoke and contrails provide a sense of the actual flight path, sometimes in reverse direction. This video is of an in-flight demonstration flown by the Russian's 30MK fighter aircraft. You will not believe what you are about to see. The fighter can stall from high speed, stopping forward motion in seconds. (full stall). Then it demonstrates an ability to descend tail first without causing a compressor stall. It can also recover from a flat spin in less than a minute.
These maneuver capabilities don't exist in any other aircraft in the world today.. Take a look at the video with the sound up. This aircraft is of concern to U.S and NATO planners. We don't know which nations will soon be flying the SU-30MK, hopefully China isn't one of them.