Krauthammer Nails the 2010 National Election

(H/T Instapundit)

For the 20-30 people in the blogosphere that don'y follow Instapundit, Charles Krauthammer sums things up beautifully on cusp of the 2010 election cycle in his column at the Washington Post(of all places):

In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who "sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' " Quite a uniter, urging Hispanics to go to the polls to exact political revenge on their enemies - presumably, for example, the near-60 percent of Americans who support the new Arizona immigration law.

This from a president who won't even use "enemies" to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America - but the United States of America.

This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends - not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.

Read it all here.

Weatherford Texas City Charter Propositions

NO to ODD Number Propositions Yes to EVEN Number Propositons

The Weatherford Democrat had a rather ‘naive’ summary of the proposed changes to the Weatherford City Charter. The following is a more thorough appraisal and critique of the propositions along with my personal voting recommendations and rationale.

According to the Weatherford Democrat:

Proposition No. 1

[a] Would lengthen terms for city council members from two years to three years. Under the current two-year length, a vacancy is filled at the next general election or by council appointment if there is less than six months remaining for the term. A three-year length would change the process. State law requires a special election be held as soon as practicable to fill the remainder of the term. With two-year terms, the candidate with the most votes wins. In a three-year term setting, a candidate needs 50 percent plus one vote to win. This means if there are more than two candidates and no one candidate receives a majority, the top two vote getters advance to a run-off election.

[b] Additional changes included in Proposition No. 1 bring the candidate qualification language into compliance with state law. Qualifications outlined in Proposition No. 1 are: the candidate must be at least 21, a citizen of the United States, qualified to vote in the city, reside inside the city limits for at least 12 months preceding the election, not file for more than one office per election and an employee of the city cannot continue to work for the city after becoming a candidate for an elective office.

[c] The proposition also clarifies the duties and powers of the city council to prevent the council from exercising the duties of the city manager, holding other public office or voting on matters where a conflict of interest exists. These duties include enacting municipal legislation, the power to appoint and remove appointed persons, setting the compensation of all appointed city officers, establishing an operating policy, establishing the boundaries of the city and establishing the salary structures for each job classification.

I VOTE A BIG NO!!! This should have been three separate proposals, and I would have voted yes for [c]. The 50% provision is a job security ‘Easter egg’ for an incumbent. It allows the other council members to handpick a replacement that then has the advantage of being an incumbent in the next election. Run-off elections will also probably cost more money than the nickel’s worth of difference between almost any two candidates. I view some of the additional provisions as a candy coating for a potentially bitter pill, but there is another big problem with this proposition. The proposition DELETES the following paragraph in its entirety (emphasis mine):

The Mayor and each Councilman Member shall be a resident citizen of the City of Weatherford, and have the qualifications of electors therein. The Mayor, Councilmen Members and other officers and employees shall not be indebted to the city, shall not hold any public office of emolument, and shall not be interested in the profits or emoluments of any contract, job work or service for the municipality, or interested in the sale to the city of any supplies, equipment, material or articles purchased; nor shall any of them be the owner of stock in any public utility providing utility service within the city limits or subject to rate regulation by the City Council. Any officer or employee of the city who shall cease to possess any of the qualifications herein required shall forfeit his office or position, and any contract in which any officer or employee shall or may become interested may be declared void by the Council. No officer or employee of the city shall accept any frank, free ticket, passes or service or anything of value directly or indirectly from any person, firm or corporation, upon terms more favorable than are granted to the public, and any violation, of this section shall be a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof, such office or employment shall be forfeited.

I think I'd like to keep the paragraph just as it is, thank you very much.Some of the provisions removed by the previous paragraph are replaced by a weaker provision (again, emphasis mine):

(d) Elected officials of the City having substantial interest in any proposed or existing contract, purchase, work, sale or service to, for or by the City shall not vote or render a decision or use that position, authority, or influence, in any manner that would result in personal betterment, financially or otherwise, to any degree. Elected officials shall publicly disclose any such interest upon assumption of office or prior to consideration of any such matters.

So, let me get this straight. It is OK to have a “little interest” with no definition of what is or is not ‘substantial’, and as long as you recuse yourself and let your buddies… er… ‘fellow members’ vote in your best interest everything will be just fine? I am certain there will be no ‘Quid Propos’ in our future, and disclosures will be made with this paragraph in force. (That last sentence was sarcasm.)

What makes anyone think lowering the standards for our political office holders at any time--much less now--is a good idea?

Proposition No. 2
Again according to the Weatherford Democrat, Proposition 2:

establishes the duties, responsibilities and position of the city manager. The current charter does not have these duties clearly defined. Changes under this proposition would provide language in the charter to implement the city’s council-manager form of government. This proposition would also remove the requirement that the city attorney reside within the Weatherford city limits,but would still require the attorney to have an office inside the city.
Assistant City Manager Robert Hanna said the current requirement is too restrictive. “When the Zellers decide to retire and stop representing the city, we’re going to have to find other legal council,” he said. “We have some really qualified law firms in town, but they may not live in the city limits and would be precluded from representing the city. This is to provide the council the maximum flexibility to have the best and most qualified representation.” The council could mandate that the attorney live inside the city if they choose, he added.

I VOTE YES! OK by me. I’m for any provision that doesn’t necessarily increase the number of attorneys living in Weatherford. This should make it easier to run them out of town if necessary.

Proposition No. 3The Democrat tells us that: Proposition No. 3..

... would take away the requirement to read and vote on an ordinance twice before it become effective. Hanna said the requirement to read and vote on all ordinances twice is an old practice once common in city government. “There may be some controversial ordinances where it is important to do that still and they have the right to [have a second read],” he said. “But where it doesn’t make sense other than adding to bureaucracy, we’re trying to get rid of that. Cities have gotten away from that because the speed of business has increased and government is slow enough as it is.”

I VOTE NO!!! Old Government is Slow Government is Good Government. I enjoy the fact that it is hard to pull a ‘fast one’ if you have to pull it off twice! Conversely, really good ideas ought to breeze through twice without any problem. Now I'm wondering who in city government told the Deputy City Manager to put the 'smiley face' on this pig?

Proposition No. 4The Weatherford Democrat piece says....

Proposition No. 4 cleans up language in the budget and finance area of the charter. Most of this section of the charter does not currently comply with state requirements or is superseded by state regulations. Adoption of this proposition would finalize the city’s current financial practices.

I vote YES (hesitantly). This one seems pretty harmless on the read-through. Which begs the questions over Proposition 1 even more: Why wasn’t the candy coating used in Proposition 1 included with this proposition? I'm hesitant on the YES because how do I know someone isn't successfully trying to pull one over after seeing Prop 1 and 3?

Proposition No. 5On this one the WD tells us:

Proposition No. 5 includes revisions to make the charter language gender neutral, simplify and clarify language, and add paragraph headings and subsection numerical designations without changing the meaning. Revisions would be made throughout the entire charter.

I Vote NO!! Somebody needs to keep their stinking ‘Something-Studies Pseudo-Scientific” fingers of Political Correctness off my City Charter For crying’ out loud! Making changes just so some guy with ‘Low T’ and a ponytail can feel good about himself is pure silliness. It is even more silly if the guy is a ‘she’. Spare the rest of us your 'esteem' issues if you please.

A full description of the amendments and the charter are available on the city’s website at www.weatherfordtx.gov/charter2010.
Or-- if you are in a hurry-- you can jump to the PDF file that is a red lined markup showing actual deletions and additions proposed:
http://weatherfordtx.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=1782

Read. Heed. Make Your Vote Count.

BTW: I (sadly) thoroughly expect all these propositions to pass because enough people won't pay enough attention.

Rumsfeld's New Book: Press STILL too Stupid to Understand

In the early days after 9/11/01 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was excorciated in the press for the explaining the difference between types of things we know, the things we do not know, and the things we do not know we know. Now his new book is about to come out and is titled "Known and Unknown" and the clueless AP continues to wallow in its ignorance. From the Washington Examiner's Version:

"Known and Unknown" refers to a widely quoted explanation — praised by some as philosophy, criticized by others as double-talk — Rumsfeld offered in 2002 about the lack of evidence that Iraq was supplying terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know," he said. "There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

Philosophy? Double-talk? How about long-used definitions in Risk, Project, and Program Managment disciplines?
Perhaps the media's cluelessness concerning such concepts is understandable. After all, this way of determining where one has gaps in knowledge and the nature of those gaps is a tool used by people who, y'know, actually do something instead of just talking and writing about it.

Which come to think of it, probably also explains why the Media and the Left tried to hold President Bush accountable for 'mistakes' that were merely outcomes that could not be reliably predicted: they never heard of Thucidides' Imponderables either.

History Revealing Itself?

Updated: 9/15/10
Don't know if a story that is developing out in the wilds is a (complete) hoax or not, but if it is real, it will be really something. I'll talk to friends and family offline in detail but for now, ponder what these things just might have in common:
1. Vichy French
2. FW-200
3. Me-109
4. Kai Do Maru (sp?)
5. Showa/Nakajima L2D
6. Japanese Naval Attache Marines/Paratroopers
NEW:
7. Sorta "Fake" IJN Attache Case: Real but 'Planted'

New Comments are Unmoderated...

Again!
I had to enable comment moderation a while back to ensure I could catch and manually remove spam before it hit the public view. Blogger has finally enabled a spam filter and it appears to be working quite well. So until the spammers get the upper hand again, moderation is OFF.

As a reminder, I do not filter out opposing points of view just because they are 'opposition' (I prefer an honest 'back and forth' , but commenters must be registered with Blogger or have OpenID. This seems like a nice balance of openness and accountability.

The Limits of Policy Analysis Analysis

An open letter to Ms Megan McArdle
Gee whiz, Megan. You provide a fair illustration of Herzberg's Two-Factor (Hygiene and Motivation) Theory, but an abysmal one for tying it to any ‘substitute effect’ economic argument. Using the same example, please expand on the product-output side of the story (productivity gains that allow the higher pay in the first place) and how that ripples out into the macro view of economics and the world. What you describe as the ‘substitution effect’ I think can be more accurately described as recognition of ‘opportunity costs’. The distinction is important, because not only does one decide their leisure is more valuable, but tax considerations progressively reduce the net value of the labor that is performed.

Perhaps the biggest point passed by is the recognition that a ‘rising tide lifts all boats’. If I am making more money because of the demand for my employer’s product, unless all profits (company and personal) are parked in a non-interest bearing location, those monies are added to the amount of money circulating and available for other products, the production and sale of which all generate revenue for many 'someones'.

To summarize, your attempt to find fault with supply side economics in this case is a clear "swing and a miss".

P.S. I would have commented at the source, but I don't need to sign up for any more 'services' or 'feeds'. I would have e-mailed you, but it wasn't readily apparent what your address was at the link.

Howard Zinn FBI Shocka! .. He WAS a Commie!

FBI: Yep, he was a Commie.

No doubt there will be those that will attempt to claim that because there is no video of him admitting it, or a smoking gun consisting of something like his signed party membership form (yet), that the released documents means he wasn't a member of the Communist Party (of any country). But by any reasonable interpretation of the "walks like a duck" test, Zinn was an unapologetic, Marxist, anti-American POS -- the released FBI documents merely drive the truth home.

Yes, Howard Zinn is dead. Unfortunately, he's just not dead enough,....yet. With a fatuous Zinn.org website updated regularly (including proud links to the FBI documents), and seemingly no shortage of Omega-columnists providing carefully selective references to the released files, (including avoiding any mention of the record showing he was filmed teaching Marxism to ACP members, nor of his associating with just about every ACP front group that came along) his legacy will no doubt 'struggle' on for some time, carried by the latest crop of equally despicable fellow travellers.
Update: Some observations on Zinn and his fan base from Ron Radosh.

Awwww. Prius Drivers Lose Their Perk

(H/T Jalopnik)

The 'State' giveth. And when your behaviors have been sufficiently altered, the 'State' taketh away.

Of course, my feelings concerning 'hybrids', especially the Prius, and the insentient emoters that tend to buy them, have been expressed before.

At least the Prius is 'better' than the last Honda Insight, although what Jeremy Clarkson wrote about the Insight applies pretty much to all 'hybrids' (just change some locations):

But I cannot see how making a car with two motors costs the same in terms of resources as making a car with one.
The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

To be honest, I have seen one 'hybrid' I really liked. I was on a business trip to California earlier this year and saw this one:

Sweeeet...

'Carpet Bombing' vs CARPET BOMBING!

Etymological Observations: A Safari into the Semantics of the Left

From the back and forth in my last adventure in the threads at Defense Tech here, it was driven home that industrious but small minds had sometime succeeded in perverting the English language (once again) to suit their purposes. In this specific instance I am referring to the use of the term: 'Carpet Bombing'.

From the thread at the referenced link, two individuals identify air strike activity conducted in wars after Vietnam as 'carpet bombing'. I ruminated as to why this must be, since I distinctly remember interviews and briefings with senior DOD civilian and military leaders where they corrected such mis-perceptions...repeatedly. I specifically remembered the 'repeatedly' part because it seemed that the questioners/interviewers seized on the term in Desert Storm and seized upon it again early during Operation Allied Force. It then reappeared again for Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. The term was not originating within DOD and NOWHERE is it spoken of in military community as an acceptable, much less preferred 'technique' in applying force through Airpower.

It did not take much researching to verify my memories of on the topic during the wars from Desert Storm forward were correct. From a 15 March 1991 briefing during Desert Storm (emphasis mine):

This is the 117, you've seen it. It's been operational now for nearly 10 years. It still represents the state of the art as far as operationally fielded technology. As far as we know, it's never been tracked by any Iraqi radar. It has certainly never been touched by bullets or SAMs or anything else. We operated for 43 days with this aircraft completely invulnerable,so far as we know. As it says, never touched by target defenses.
I want to make a little more on this point here, because with the combination of stealth and precision attack capability in the 117, we were able to attack targets very discretely. We did not carpet bomb downtown Baghdad. As a matter of fact, it's obvious to anyone who has been watching on television, the pictures of Baghdad neighborhoods untouched,people driving around, walking around on the sidewalks, and so forth. We took special care to make sure that we attacked only military targets, and we attacked them quite precisely.
Aircrews were informed to bring home the ordnance if they weren't sure they were locked to the right targets. We made very few mistakes. I'm quite proud of the fact that we achieved high levels of destruction against military targets with minimum collateral damage.

The statement reads as if someone was out there claiming that the US was 'carpet bombing' Baghdad doesn't it? Such claims must have happened more than once: From an article in the Spring 1997 Airpower Journal (emphasis mine):

When news from Basra in early February suggested carpet bombing, Pentagon spokesmen seemed increasingly exasperated. “We never said there would be no collateral damage,” Lt Gen Thomas Kelly complained at one of his afternoon briefings:
What we did say is that our pilots scrupulously adhered to good targeting . . .and in fact flew that target profile to the best of their ability. We go to great lengths . . . to avoid collateral damage. But war is a dirty business, and unfortunately, there will be collateral damage. There's no way one can prohibit it.
Iraq wasn't claiming even five hundred civilian casualties, yet military spokesmen were practically admitting hidden damage. One might have thought Dresden or Tokyo had occurred.

Now we skip forward to 1999, and Operation Allied Force. From a May 1, 1999 Pentagon briefing (again, all emphasis mine) where the briefer describes precision attack against area targets, and specifically how sticks of unguided bombs are laid down in very defined target areas:

One of the things that's been talked about a little bit is targets and collateral damage. We've talked about that a lot. There's some discussion about B-52s being used in carpet type bombing. We don't do that with B-52.
I mentioned yesterday that our B-52s have changed over the years dramatically, with increases to their avionics capability, increases to their GPS capability, increasing in their overall avionics.

[Chart - Prahovo Petroleum Production Storage Facility, Serbia]

This is a target, you've seen many of these before. This is about 1,000 feet long in this area, probably, maybe a couple of hundred feet wide. It's not an atypical target. We have several of those we've seen before.
Next slide.

[Prahovo Petroleum Production Storage Facility, Serbia]

This would be about the lay down pattern of the B-52 today at whatever altitude we want them to fly at. So you can see that, basically, this is not carpet bombing. This would be a perfect target for that type of weapon to hit. There are other targets, assembly areas we could use with the B-52, and it has a very, very capable delivery method with their avionics they have today to attack a target like this with very little collateral damage. As you can see, there wouldn't be much of a problem with anything around here being in the category of collateral damage.
So as we talk about the B-52, it has the capability to attack with standoff weapons or gravity weapons, and these gravity weapons are not dumb bombs anymore because of the avionics we have in the aircraft to make sure that we do, in this case, what would be called precision on that area target.

But it seems there is 'movement' out there who insists on perverting the term 'carpet bombing' for reasons of their own - perhaps as part of a fey attempt to evoke some emotional response among the weaker and more unprepared minds among the masses. I have to conclude as much because the knee-jerk response of crying 'carpet bombing' again emerged in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. First, from a 31 October 2001 DOD briefing (still my emphasis) on operations in Afghanistan:

Q: Admiral, of all the strikes south of Mazar-e Sharif -- the airstrikes on the Taliban positions, have they all involved precision-guided weapons? Or have the B-52s started to drop strings of 500-pound unguided bombs -- colloquially "carpet bombing" -- now that you have better information on where these divisions are.
Stufflebeem: I'm not sure if it's -- if it's necessary to get into specific mission by mission, but it is -- it is fair to say that we're using both precision and non-precision weapons while attacking Taliban forces -- you know, while they're deployed.
Q: Could use [sic] deterrent carpet bombing and the strings of the unguided bombs against those positions around Mazar-e Sharif?
Stufflebeem: I'm familiar with the term "carpet bombing." I think it's an inaccurate term. It's an old -- an old expression. Heavy bombers have the capacity to carry large loads of weapons, and oftentimes if a target presents itself either in an engagement zone, or when directed, it's possible to release an entire load of bombs at once, in which case -- the real formal term for that is called a "long stick," which has also been called carpet bombing.

So now 'carpet bombing is a 'colloquialism' versus a highly defined term? It is a slippery slope that we seem to be riding.
Now, from an interview that Paul Wolfowitz gave to the BBC in November the same year (more of my emphasis) we see further refutation of the the term 'carpet bombing':

BBC: Can I just ask you first of all about the latest developments in the war in Afghanistan which is that positions north of Kabul are being now carpet bombed,we hear. Is that a change of strategy?

Wolfowitz: I don't think it's a change of strategy. That's a journalistic term, I believe. We are certainly putting very heavy effort against Taliban positions. The strategy from the beginning has been to empower the opposition forces inside Afghanistan to be able to undermine and eventually hopefully overthrow the Taliban.

BBC: But moving from a position where clearly the strikes were one off from surgical to B-52s going in and it looks like carpet bombing to anyone who saw the pictures.

Wolfowitz: Again, I find it -- this is not carpet bombing a la Dresden and World War II. It is one of the reasons, by the way, we did not send (inaudible) from the beginning is, it is twice the size, it covers a significant area, but it's areas that are chosen quite precisely to be front line units. When you're going after front line units you don't take out one soldier at a time.

So even the civilian leadership gets the difference between bombing a city and bombing 'front line' units in the field. A fine point as to why Dresden doesn't meet my high standard for the term 'carpet bombing' is one I will put aside as 1) irrelevant for this argument and 2) a more complex issue than can be tackled in a blog post - Heck, I have read books that have fallen short on the issue.

Finally, we note that the 'carpet bombing' meme survived to OIF, and that the press refuses to make/see the distinction between precision use of unguided weapons and 'carpet bombing' as a convenient scare term. From a March 3, 2003 briefing at the Pentagon we find the now-retired General McChrystal jumping in to correct a questioner on the topic:

Q: Torie, on the use of the heavy bombers -- and I address this to the general primarily -- the B-1s, B-2s and B-52s, can you tell what kind of ordnance they're dropping? The B-52 is dropping dumb bombs, what we used to call carpet bombing, on the Republican Guard troops?

McChrystal: Sir, they are not. They are dropping a combination of munitions, a large number of precision munitions. So there's really not carpet bombing occurring.

I would have loved to know who asked that question. The phrasing dismisses the distinction that exists between carpet bombing and techniques into a simple change or terms for the same thing.

You don't have to look hard for where the MSM gets their ideas on 'carpet bombing'. Just enter the terms "carpet bombing" with the name of the war you are interested in in your search engine and you get such lovely link suggestions:

"Operation Desert Slaughter": http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Oper_Desert_Slaughter_1991

PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/weapons/b52.html

Rabid Montclair State University faculty (A Stalinist-English Teacher?-ROFLMAO!):
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/gulf-war-fingrut.html

Project on Defense Alternatives:
http://www.comw.org/pda/0201oef.html

...you get the drift. All the usual 'Blame America First' scumb...er...suspects.

Debunking B-2 Myths and Myth Making

Holding back the horde over at Defense Tech

There's a guy named Byron Skinner that shows up in the threads on Defense Tech that likes to make assertions on Airpower - a topic about which he pretty much knows absolutely nothing. Usually I can stand back and marvel at the innanity without getting involved, and usually somebody else points it out for me. But on this thread he pretty much went off the deep end on a topic and threw in a rather lame pre-emptive attack against "right wing ideologists" who might take umbrage with his 'points'. DT has started really limiting comment space and has made it practically impossible to adequately fisk monumentally erroneous arguments, so I left an excerpt with a reference to this site in case anyone wants to bother to read the whole debunking with references.

Oh...and yes, my contemporaries often wonder why I 'bother'. Sometimes so do I. [;-)

My response to 'Byron' follows:

RE: "SMSgt. Mac. The US did in fact carpet bomb in the 1991 Gulf war and most embarrassing of all Tora Bora was carpet bombed bombed by B-1B's and bin Laden walked out."

You are playing fast and loose with the term 'Carpet Bombing'. Carpet Bombing in modern usage describes attacking a large area, such as a city, in pursuit of total destruction or terror and without an explicit target of military value (like a patch of jungle with unknown inhabitants). It is often used (inaccurately) to describe 'Bomber' Harris’ campaigns including the bombing of Dresden or (just as inaccurately) LeMay’s fire-bombing of Japan in WWII. After Vietnam there have been AREA TARGETS (ex runways/airfields, military installations, army formations in defilade, CAVE COMPLEXES, etc) where sticks of unguided bombs have been laid down, but these areas are comparably small and compact compared to ‘carpet bombing’ a city.

More on the topic of 'Carpet Bombing' here.

RE: “The B-2 even according to the Air Force it had no unique conventional mission and on four of the 21 airframes were modified for the conventional mission, three are left.”

That doesn’t square with the fact that in 1999’s OAF war then-Major Matt Kmon stated that he “had six jets at anytime to execute the flying schedule” and the performance of 5 of the aircraft by tail numbers (1088, 0329, 1071, 0331, 1067) in Operation Allied Force were all explicitly mentioned on just one page in “The B-2 Goes to War” (Rebecca Grant, IRIS, 2001, p. 92).

RE: “The Air Force has completely withdrawn the B-2 from the conventional role. To correct you SMSgt Mac the B-2 was never designed nor intended for the conventional mission, to preform [sic] the conventional mission four airframes were, at a high cost, modified and a suite of weapons, since the four B-2's modified for the conventional operations never received the electronic package they never dropped the JADAM had to be developed just for those four bombers.”

You. Correct ME on Airpower in general and specifically Long Range Strike? Every one of Byron's fairy tales is demonstrably false. I wouldn’t hold it against anyone if they did not know that the B-2 was the first bomber since the advent of the atomic bomb to be developed from the beginning to have both a conventional and nuclear capability (I’ve heard senior DoD leadership make the same error), but the absolutely ludicrous story accompanying this assertion at this time simply BEGS for a thorough smackdown from an authoritative source.

From the ‘B-2 Stealth Bomber Fact Book’, Rev 3. dated November 1992, citing the B-2 Weapon System Specification dated November 21, 1981 we read:

• From its inception, the B-2 statement of requirement has included conventional capability.“…provide the capability to conduct missions across the spectrum of conflict, including general nuclear war,…nuclear engagements less than general war, conventional conflict, and peacetime crisis situations.”

We also find in the same document a nice overview up front of the conventional and nuclear armament and carriage capability circa 1992. I've posted photos below if anyone is interested verifying the facts.

RE: ”The conventional role the Air Force envisioned for the B-2 was as a stand off attack weapon that could remain outside air defense missile systems. The problem of course was that the terrorists never bothers to buy any ADM systems.”

The first conventional missile planned for the B-2 was the TSSAM, since superceded by the JASSM. It was an all aspect LO missile capable of striking high value targets deep inside a peer opponent after being launched discretely from within the contested airspace.

RE: “Your #6 statement is so absurd and just plain nonsense that it doesn't even rate a response. Your personal attacks and lack of knowledge of the subject only reflects the desperation or the right wing to make any kind of argument or this issue.”

Well, which is it? Ad Hominem attack. Decry retaliation. Make an Ad Hominem attack. Don’t take swings if you can’t stand getting smacked.

And, once again! I’ve shown that YOU Byron... you lead the way in 'lack of knowledge**'.

**at least when it comes to Airpower and its role in National Defense.

Photos from B-2 Stealth Bomber Fact Book (Circa 1992) follow. This was a real find for me - I picked it up at the San Diego Air And Space Museum a year or so ago on the bookstore's used book rack.

First Photo: Cover shot. this was put out for Gov't consumption as a backgrounder right after the B-2 buy had been cut to 20.


Here we have just a couple of pages into the document, the the kinds of weapons and weapon carriage schemes that the B-2 was initially to carry. That's an awful lot of conventional weapons listed for a bomber that doesn't carry them. By 1994/5 the GATS/GAM and less- accurate (but cheaper) JDAMs were looming on the horizon.

Outside of a briefing NG gives VIPs (and some pilots in the early days) I've never seen this excerpt of the statement of requirements in an unclassified document anywhere else. Note the second major bullet.
More reinforcement as to the point about the B-2's conventional capability.

ANOTHER "Conservative= Bad Person" Study?

Déjà vu... all over again.

The summary of yet another...ahem...‘study’ at this link finding correlation between one's personality and ones politics has a strangely similar feel to one that was a pretty hot topic back at Dr. Helen’s blog back in 2005 (disclosure: I was a commenter) .

From the latest:

Researchers at UofT [Toronto] have shown that the psychological concern for compassion and equality is associated with a liberal mindset, while the concern for order and respect of social norms is associated with a conservative mindset.

One wonders if the 'researchers' ever considered how their own bias may have caused them to miss a few key questions and answers, such as: What if liberals seek 'equality of outcomes' while conservatives seek 'equality of opportunity'? And how does their bias affect how they decide which philosophy is more 'compassionate' and just?

Is it just me, or are these things coming out even more frequently these days? I can hardly wait for Iron Shrink and/or Dr. Helen to weigh in on this one.

AF Chief of Staff?...or Just another 'Suit'?

(H/T In From the Cold)
General Schwartz, in the latest of a long string of events highlighting the AF's 'buisiness ethos' is either actively subverting attempts by a non-profit historical group from gettng their hands on an F-105 thunderchief and enough parts to get one flying again. The historical significance of the F-105's combat history, including the sacrifices and efforts of the men who flew them and kept them flying cannot be denied, and their memory should be kept alive. Bringing what is now commonly referred to as 'Heritage Flights' to the masses at airshows and in silent display makes these beasts a reality to those who've forgotten or never knew them.
I was stationed at Hill AFB for many years, including the time when the ANG's 419thFW transitioned from being the last F-105 Wing to the first Guard unit to fly the F-16.
My home was a couple of miles off the end of the runway, and you always knew when a "Thud" flight was taking off. The Thud sure went out with a bang that I'll never forget: the 'Thudout' was a sight that would never be seen again.
Come to think of it, the AF is also missing a pretty good opportunity to remind those who would complain* about the F-35 noise footprint, what used to be flying overhead when rarely a complaint was heard.

* Attention Boise! You used to have freakin' F-4s stationed there! Now suck it up and slap on your "Jet Noise - The Sound of Freedom" bumper stickers. (In the comments section at the link, I'd say most of the locals are telling the fearful ninnies just about the same thing.)

End of Libel? Media Tiptoes Around the Problem

Ever Hear of "Occam's Razor"?
The New York Observer has an entertaining piece featuring a Time Inc. attorney who's specialty is (was) Libel Law. All sorts of reasons are presented as likely behind the disappearance of libel suits against big media are offered, and I think some come close, describing some likely ancillary reasons, but it is almost as if they're dancing around the obvious one.
Think about it for just a moment, What's your first thought when someone besmirches your good name? Answer: "Will anyone believe them?"
Credibility in the mainstream media is seen as MIA by most people. Combine that with the fact the media doesn't have a lock on the flow of information anymore and people can get their side 'out there' (mentioned in the linked article) and you get a drop in people who care enough about lies the media writes about them to take legal action.

An Arsenal We Can All Live With? NOT!

Gary Schaub Jr. and James Wood Forsyth Jr. miss the target: using ‘Nukes’.

“The Pentagon has now told the public, for the first time, precisely how many nuclear weapons the United States has in its arsenal: 5,113. That is exactly
4,802 more than we need.”

Maybe. Maybe not. But you sure couldn’t rationally arrive at such a conclusion based upon their OpEd (see link in header) or the original scholarship the OpEd is based upon. The OpEd is a necessarily light on facts due to column space. There is no excuse for the same of its source document, and to my thinking, it damns the OpEd's assertions on the face of it. I find much of the original paper... ahh.., let's just say 'problematic'. What follows are the most serious faults I find with the authors’ writings.

First problem: they carefully cherry-picked their sources. They cite some former military authorities without providing evidence that these source’s opinions are common much less in the majority. They cite “Alian [sic] Enthoven” of all people on this subject. Alain Enthoven played a critical role in the rise of modeling and simulation in defense policy development and is also a once-renowned economist, DoD budgeteer and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Unfortunately for Dr. Enthoven, he is also a man who had his “Analytical A**” handed to him at least once on nuclear force structure issues by Glenn A Kent. One cannot discern with certainty if our subject scholars were aware of this, but one would think that if they were, they would also have known that the reason the Nuclear Triad survived to present day is based upon sound logic. Hint: It has nothing to do with their simplistic discounting of the Triad which was expressed as follows in the source paper:

“ The second criticism has to do with the future of the triad, which was the fulcrum of deterrence throughout the Cold War. Some might argue that the triad was effective and its redundancy and flexibility shored up international stability and helped keep the Cold War cold. It is, however, important to recall that the Soviets had no such operational concept. They relied heavily, almost exclusively, on missiles and still managed to deter the United States. If one accepts the basic idea that it is the political value of nuclear weapons that matters, the method of delivery is immaterial.”

Ahhh,,,the infamous 'some' who 'say'. It was on the very issue of a determining whether future defense would be based upon a Triad or a Diad (doing away with the manned bomber), that Kent’s analyses washed away Enthoven’s:

“In preference to Dr. Enthoven’s highly simplified approach, which was built entirely around [our] cost, I proposed a more-sophisticated approach. I proposed that we analyze how many targets of the 1,200 would be destroyed under different strategies on both sides, still assuming that SRAMs were 1.5 times as expensive as RVs and further assuming that the Soviets would have to pay the same cost in defenses to defend a target either against an RV or a SRAM.
However, the Soviet Union would have to decide whether to deploy interceptors designed to defeat RVs or interceptors to defeat SRAMs; the same interceptor could not do both jobs.
This more-sophisticated approach turned the tables on the analysis by Dr. Enthoven. He had introduced the concept of a nationwide Soviet defense, thinking it would make his argument more persuasive. But he had not reflected that the Soviets would have to build very different systems to defend against ballistic missiles (RVs) as opposed to rockets (SRAMs) delivered by bombers. Neither had he considered the effects of different strategic choices on both sides. In other words, he had opened the issue of Soviet defenses without thinking it through.”
-text in brackets[] mine.

In the same manner as Dr. Enthoven, the authors of the paper and OpEd have opened an issue ‘without thinking it through’.
The above anecdote is also an excellent vehicle for illustrating my next point: Nowhere in the paper do the authors deal with the ‘and then the enemy does what?‘ question. They talk superficially of force, counter-force, etc in economic terms. But I see no evidence they have addressed the possible overt and clandestine moves potential adversaries could make to defeat a piddling 300 or so warheads. As Gen. Kent described Dr Enthoven’s analysis:

"While, in general, I preach that simplicity in analysis is preferred over complexity, in this case, my more-complex approach won. The lesson here is that one must not pursue simple approaches to the point that violence is done to the phenomena under examination. In particular, it is important not to treat the adversary as static. In military affairs, as in most fields of human endeavor, opponents react to each other’s moves. Although this seems obvious, it is surprisingly common for advocates of certain policies or programs to assume that the adversary does not react to our initiative. In the case of Dr. Enthoven’s comparison of Polaris and SRAM, this assumption was a fatal flaw."

I see no cold calculations in the author’s analysis where a country with a lot of empty space could attempt to shepherd, grow and move their forces or defenses ‘out of sight and out of mind’. I get no indication of estimations as to how opponents (or allies) will calculate how social constructs might survive or how fast they could be reconstituted, or how such a calculation might encourage a foe to believe they could ride out a ‘minimal’ nuclear exchange. There is no allusion to any analysis as how future potential enemies forming nuclear alliances might have to be be dealt with. So it appears the authors also have rather naively committed Dr. Enthoven’s fatal flaw.
Finally, I really take issue with this most happily-conveyed conclusion of the authors’:

"So long as war remains a finite possibility, we have to be concerned with outcomes, and while some would be bad, others would be worse. In the age of minimum deterrence, the world will have to stand for a few more nuclear states; the majority of them will not pursue nuclear weapons."

IMHO, there are many serious problems with this worldview. It strikes me that in their willingness to live in a world with more nuclear powers they are in reality more willing to live with the idea that nuclear strikes or exchanges will become more likely. They would probably be ‘little’ exchanges on the “Acme Armageddon Scale”, but how do you prepare and account for the effect of even one ‘little’ exchange? How do you contain them? Think of nuclear weapons like ‘secrets’: the fewer entities that have them the less likely they will ‘get out’.
The conclusion clearly demonstrates the authors have a skewed view of risk, the definition of which is: probability times the consequences. If we reduce the nuclear arsenals with so little care as that which has been used in the author’s analyses, we potentially increase the as yet unknown probability of a nuclear exchange to result in a nuclear war of some indeterminable (but hopefully less than “world-killer”) scope. How do the authors know that they are not increasing the net risk in their approach? Answer: We can’t find it in the writings so we don’t know. I am particularly wondering if the authors have considered the results if after a 'small' exchange, some not-yet-post-modern society's 'leaders' conclude: "Hey, that wasn't so bad".

It is because of thinking such as that expressed by Doctors Schaub and Forsyth that I say the following prayer almost every day:

"Lord, please protect us from Academics and all other ‘Hybris’-ridden 'Annointed', Amen."

I kid you not.

Note: In the original paper there was another co-author. One presumes that as an Air Force Officer and an honest-to-gosh Strategic Planner (vs, a schoolyard one), he had the good sense and experience to distance himself from the political ho-hah in the OpEd. People shouldn’t read too much into the authors’ teaching at AF institutions. You will find broader ranges of viewpoints and backgrounds in the halls of the Air University than you will ever find in so-called ‘name’ universities.

Updated 5/25 to clarify points and improve readability.

Ann Althouse Debunks Media Wailing on Texas Curriculum

So I don't have to. (Hat tip: Althouse via Instapundit)

Prof. Ann Althouse picks apart another breathless (and deceitful) report from the mainstream media on how Texas is somehow subverting the education of Texas youth.
Thanks Professor! (And my closing statement at the bottom of this post still rings true.)

Updated and Bumped from and earlier post titled:
Leftard Reporter April Castro Shocked! Shocked!
...that the Texas Board of Education moves to De-Leftardize School curriculum.

My Original Post:
In an AP article just published and titled Texas ed board vote reflects far-right influences, 'writer' April Castro breathlessly reveals her bottomless ignorance of all things American.

A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

'Far right faction... injecting conservative ideals' - Got it.
I'd have to review the litany of changes that the Texas Board of Education is making in the 'original' before I would pass judgement of them, but Little Ms. April helpfully provides a few (with obligatory leftist bias I'm sure) examples of the 'radical' moves being made in Texas Ed. My favorite is one of the first ones:

Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic,"...

Gee. ah... April honey? The United States IS a frickin' "constitutional republic". See here, here, and here.
I suppose just about everything looks like it is 'far right' to someone if they can be habitually found grazing in the deep left field.

Update: I knew there would be more breathless and vapid criticisms of Texas Board of Education's making changes to the curriculum and I was right. Seems the Freakonomics twit has poor search engine skills that lead him to some poor conclusions (thanks for the info Volokh!) concerning F.A Hayek.

You couldn't write marketable fiction with characters as dumb as those found in the MSM.