RT @iowahawkblog: Difference between Baywatch & #AttackWatch: one is a gratuitous display of fake boobs, the other starred David Hasselhoff
http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23AttackWatch

You really gotta wonder what goes thru the minds of Obama's handlers...

Michale.....

Sounds like she might be a tad insecure. If her record is strong enough, she can win it without political tricks and misdirection...

On another note...

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.73fa2bce50221a12ab98013337927324.411&show_article=1

Didn't Obama say in his recent JOBS speech that Republicans should stop the political posturing and partisan circus??

Sure would be nice if Obama could practice what he preaches...

"If you love me, you'll help me pass this bill."
-President Barack Obama

Seriously!???

I think that Congress should pass a law that gives each and every American a nickel for every time the President says "me" or "I"....

Shit, the whole country would be millionaires inside a month!! :D

Michale....

I guess she is trying to channel her inner Palin.. :D

On another note (and getting back to the subject of this commentary) it's beginning to look like Obama's big Jobs boondoggle will be DOA in Congress...

So much for "big", eh??

Michale.....

http://www.attackwatch.com/

Doesn't the color scheme remind you of Nazi Germany???

Who is the genius in the White House who thought this 1984-esque informant site with the Nazi color scheme would be a good idea...

Seriously.....

Michale.....

Anyone wanna talk about the New York Special Election?? :D

How many hints and tips do Democrats need to get upside the head from everyday Americans before they start thinking, "Hmmmmmmm... Maybe we *ARE* the problem???"....

Michale.....

Of course, such a person would never win nomination to any major office, let alone the presidency. Because we, as a polity, are utterly incapable of choosing self-improvement over self-congratulation.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/

I can see why Krugman did not want to take comments on this pathetic and wholly despicable commentary...

Do progressives REALLY feel this way???

Michale.....

I would think that the Presidential Election of 2008 would disprove this notion...

And, oh yea...

JAGS WON!!!!! :D

Michale.....

Or so we vote, anyway.

It's not just partisan. A politician of either party would be toast if he or she really tried to stand for any of what we would like to think we believe in, instead of flattering us that we're already the epitome of virtue.

Mojave always reminded me of another small town, Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Both towns seemed engineered to separate travelers from their money. In both, you had to drive down about a mile of main street -- filled with gas stations, hotels, and fast food -- before you could get back on the road. Breezewood, it's even planned that way -- they could have easily built the entrance to the turnpike so you didn't have to go through town, but they engineered it so you'd have to.

Mojave may wither away, now that the bypass is there. You barely even see the town from the new road...

-CW

The whole town was surreal.. Mojave (and nearby Rosamond, to the south) were "one horse" towns...

It was as "hick" as you could imagine..

Ironically enough, during the cold war, Mojave had several hi-megaton Soviet ICBMs targeted specially for it... It was a major transportation hub that, taken out, would have crippled US transportation in the region..

And... no kind words for working Star Trek into a talking point? C'mon! "seducing the beautiful free market" and beating down the crisis with two fists in Kirkian style?? You just know I wrote that paragraph with you in mind. Heh heh.

That DID caught my eye, but I had a very partisan thought so I felt it better to keep it to myself.. :D

But seriously, any time you write Trek, I am always there!! :D

Michale.....

I had forgotten this, but also on that trip we saw a military cargo plane practicing dive-bombing out in the desert. I don't know cargo planes (I can spot a C5A, but that's it), it was a propeller-driven small-to-medium sized plane (that's as good as I can do). This was either (I forget) in the Mojave, by Edwards somewhere, or near the Chocolate Mtns.

I wondered why they were practicing dive-bombing, but later thought about it and concluded they were either practicing "under fire" takeoff and landing, or training pilots to fly those gunships (AC130s?) that are prop-driven. Whichever, it looked pretty suicidal (they'd swoop in a dive to about 300-400 ft, then pull out of it at the last possible instant), but they appeared to know what they were doing.

Like I said, I had forgotten this part of it until now.

-CW

I realize Mojave is a graveyard (and training) field, but I've driven by it more times than I can count. 9/12/01 was different, by a longshot.

Normally, there are old planes sitting around, maybe a couple dozen at the most. Some will never fly again, and are (assumably) used as training for flight crew and stewards/-esses. Some have markings of airlines that are no more.

9/12/01 there were close to A THOUSAND planes out in the desert. I didn't want to use this word in the article, because people would have thought I was exaggerating, but it was at the very least HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of planes. The vast majority of them were UPS, FedEx, and other cargo planes, but there were a fair number of passenger jets as well. Most were 747s, but there was a smattering of smaller jumbos and even smaller passenger jets. They were all precisely parked, so when you drove by them you thought "wow, there's like 50 planes in a row" but then you slowly saw that each of those was actually a rank of dozens of planes parked in a perfect grid.

If you've ever driven by the "mothball fleet" in the upper reaches of the San Francisco Bay, it was like that -- except with planes, and not WWII ships.

So, just to be clear -- I've seen Mojave Airport on a normal day. 9/12/01 was NOT a normal day out there...

-CW

Really? What was life like at the Mojave Airport? I always used to wonder that, when driving by it. It seems like a strange place, kind of surreal. Of course, now there's the bypass, so there's a freeway from the road (from Tehachapi and Bakersfield) that bypasses both Mojave and the airport, so you don't even really see it much anymore unless you stop in the town...

Sooner or later they're going to build a bridge over the US395 intersection at Four Corners, and it'll be a freeway from the Tehachapi Pass straight to Barstow.

And... no kind words for working Star Trek into a talking point? C'mon! "seducing the beautiful free market" and beating down the crisis with two fists in Kirkian style?? You just know I wrote that paragraph with you in mind. Heh heh.

:-)

-CW

And, Chris, regarding Mojave. I'm sure Michale could elaborate more, but Mojave, among others such as Marana in Arizona (and Davis Monthon AFB for the Air Force) is a "graveyard" field, where aircraft taken out of commercial service are stored pending sale or scrapping. It's likely the planes you saw were largely those.

I'd hate to impugn your 9/11 story though. I don't have a good one; my best is that I had a lunch at Nobu on Chambers St. two weeks before. That makes me feel like the sheriff in the scene in Jaws when Quint and Richard Dreyfus' character were comparing shark bite scars.

My wife and I used to live in Mojave on a little ranch at the base of the Tehachapi mountains..

My wife worked at the very airport you described...

Thanx for the trip down memory lane.. :D

Michale

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44449392/ns/politics-white_house/#.Tmsn8tSPZJ0

Doesn't look pretty...

Michale.....

Imagine the Left if Bush had gone before all of Congress and said, "I have an idea for legislation that is vital to the security of this country and you MUST pass it.", but then there was no legislation??

Yes, by all accounts, Obama gave a good speech..

The only problem is, he should have given this speech about 2 years ago instead of going off on some Democrat social agenda...

Michale.....

if, as he says, Congress needs to pass his jobs bill, "right now," then he needs to call them into emergency session, "right now," and MAKE them pass it. i think many congress-critters, especially on the democratic side, would appreciate the political cover of being able to say that the president "made them do it," so he has to credibly "make them do it." he needs to exert his will, "right now," beat them into submission until they break.

he needs to use every single shred of constitutional authority granted him, "right now," not just the non-controversial, convenient ones. if he absolutely must do something non-controversial, then divide the bill into segments so the less controversial ones can be passed first and get the ball rolling, "right now."

it's been over two and a half years, and if the president wants to have any hope of being re-elected, he needs to back up his talk with action and grow a pair. right now.