Perri Nelson's Website

For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001

“I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.”
— Barack Obama, July 27, 2008 (emphasis added)

“Barack Obama is an arrogant, racist, Marxist ass!”
— Perri Nelson, July 30, 2008

What else did the ISG get wrong?

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 4:38 PM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, War on Terror

According to the World Tribune, the Iraq Study Group report severely underestimates the number of intelligence analysts with experience and assigned to Iraq:

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department's intelligence agency has issued a response to the Iraq Study Group report.

In a Dec. 6 report, ISG, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, said DIA maintained fewer than 10 analysts with more than two years of experience and assigned to Iraq.
The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency disputed the assertion saying it employs more than 300 analysts well-versed in Iraq. The agency said 49 of them were assigned exclusively to Iraq.
...
"The Defense Intelligence Agency has more than 300 dedicated analysts focused on the many complexities of Iraq," DIA said in a statement on Dec. 12. "They include a core cadre of 49 analysts focused exclusively on the insurgency, at least half of whom have more than two years experience working this issue."

It kind of makes me wonder. If the ISG got this so wrong, what else did they get wrong? If they can't get their basic facts straight, I seriously doubt that we can trust their recommendations.

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A Decisive Defeat for Ahmadinejad

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 4:24 PM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, Elections

From Reuters: Iran vote "decisive defeat" for president: reformers

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's biggest reformist party said on Monday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had suffered a "decisive defeat" in nationwide elections last week due to his government's "authoritarian and inefficient methods".
The government's spokesman countered that by saying the government had no favored candidates in Friday's twin votes for local councils and a powerful clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts and was happy to work with the winners.
...
"The initial results of elections throughout the country indicate that Mr. Ahmadinejad's list has experienced a decisive defeat nationwide," the pro-reform Islamic Iran Participation Front said in a statement.
"These results were tantamount to a big 'no' to the government's authoritarian and inefficient methods," it said.

It's just too bad that Ahmadinejad wasn't up for re-election. That's one nutcase that needs to be taken down a few pegs.

Trackposted to Rightwing Guy, Wake Up America, Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, Wake Up America, basil's blog, DragonLady's World, Wake Up America, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Renaissance Blogger, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, and Jo's Cafe, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Mensa Barbie Welcomes You trackbacked with "Iranian Elections: Moderate Shift"

Did a "highly placed" Russian have Litvinenko assassinated?

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 3:04 PM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics

Reuters has published a report that indicates that Alexander Litvinenko's murder may have been due to a dossier he compiled on a "very highly placed member of Putin's administration".

LONDON (Reuters) - Murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed because of an eight-page dossier he had compiled on a powerful Russian figure for a British company, a business associate told the BBC on Saturday.
Litvinenko died in London on November 23 after receiving a lethal dose of radioactive polonium 210. On his deathbed, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his killing. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
Ex-spy Yuri Shvets, who is based in the United States, said Litvinenko had been employed by Western companies to provide information on potential Russian clients before they committed to investment deals in the former Soviet Union.
He said Litvinenko was asked by a British company to write reports on five Russians and asked Shvets for help. The British company was not named. Shvets said he had passed Litvinenko the information for the dossier on one individual in September.
The BBC said it had obtained extracts of the dossier, which British detectives also have, from an unnamed source. The BBC said the report contained damaging personal details about a "very highly placed member of Putin's administration."
"Litvinenko obtained the report on September 20," Shvets told the BBC. "Within the next two weeks he gave the report to Andrei Lugovoy. I believe that triggered the entire assassination."
Lugovoy is a former Russian spy who told Reuters on Thursday he had known Litvinenko casually for nearly a decade and had worked closely with him during 2005, meeting him about 10 times.
Shvets said Litvinenko had given the dossier to Lugovoy to show him how reports on Russian companies and individuals should be presented to Western clients.
However, Shvets said he believed Lugovoy was still employed by the Russian secret service the FSB, the successor to the KGB, and had leaked Litvinenko's dossier to the Russian figure.
Shvets said the report had led to the British company pulling out of a deal, losing the Russian figure potential earnings of "dozens of millions of dollars."

So maybe this was political and maybe it was personal. The "Russian figure" may have used the state apparatus to carry out a personal vendetta. No wonder Russia has promised to block the extradition of the murderer...

Update: Fox News reports that over 15,000 times the amount of polonium you can buy over the Internet was used to poison Litvinenko, or 10 times the lethal dose. They also report on more obstructionism by the Russian's "cooperating" with British investigators...

The nine British detectives sent to Moscow to investigate the murder are likely to return home this week. Russian authorities have blocked their inquiries and left them on the sidelines as their own officials question the main figures in the investigation.

Security sources told The Times that Russian officials refused to ask Mr Kovtun and Mr Lugovoy questions to which the British team wanted answers. Aware of the diplomatic sensitivities of this case, police chiefs and politicians have avoided any public disagreement with Russia or criticised the way Yuri Chaika, the country' Prosecutor-General, has effectively hijacked the investigation.

Earlier posts:

Trackposted to Rightwing Guy, Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, The HILL Chronicles, Wake Up America, basil's blog, DragonLady's World, Wake Up America, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Renaissance Blogger, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, and Jo's Cafe, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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I'm Time Magazine's Person of the Year!!!

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 12:58 PM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, Blogging

I'm Time Magazine's "Person of the Year", and so are you! Time Magazine decided to take the easy way out this year and named anyone that uses or creates content on the web as the "Person of the Year". From the Associated Press via Boston.com:

NEW YORK --Congratulations! You are the Time magazine "Person of the Year."

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals -- citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

"If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."

You certainly don't have to make the hard decisions if you give it to just about everyone. This doesn't really feel like much of an honor to me, not that I've found that previous recipients of the award were truly worthy either.

At least they did make one good decision here. They decided NOT to name Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At least they have a little sense left.

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Try Harder? How about listening?

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 9:34 AM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, Transportation, Annoyances

Danny Westneat gets it wrong. He takes Mayor Nickels, the Seattle Council and Governor Gregoire to task because the Seattle voters will have an opportunity to decide how to repair/replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. He wants the politicians to lead.

Yes, the politicians should lead, but they should also listen to the people instead of acting like spoiled brats. Here's a few bits from Mr. Westneat's column.

Maybe the 13th time will be the charm.

Once again we the people get to decide a major transportation issue — the fate of Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct. It was thrown into our laps last week by the governor and the mayor and the other decision-avoiders we've hired to shirk their duties around here. This vote will be our 13th in a decade on transportation. We have voted twice on light rail, five times on monorail, twice on gas taxes for road building and three times on Tim Eyman transportation measures.

How are you feeling about all that voting? Gotten much out of it?

Yes, we are a populist state. Voters here like to have a say. But all this saying is getting in the way of any doing.

Gov. Chris Gregoire was correct when she said we're having a tough time agreeing on what to do with our shaky waterfront highway. But then she and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels copped out.

"The only way to break the logjam is to have a vote of the people," she said. "It's the only viable alternative to doing nothing."

If that's true, then what are the politicians for? Isn't this the very job we hired them to do — to break political logjams? To give here and get there, to bend some arms and scratch some backs and somehow come up with something? Anything?

Instead, they want us to do it. So they don't have to.

We barely have a representative democracy anymore. The representative part has checked out. The democracy part may look like it's in full swing — there's certainly a lot of voting going on — but it isn't leading anywhere.

Of course Mr. Westneat's solution is for the politicians to make the decision without regard to the will of the people. He tells us an anecdote about jury duty...

I remember the last time I was on a court jury. There was not a professional problem-solver in the group. We had to decide if a guy had stabbed another guy in the stomach.

Some witnesses had been so unreliable that we argued for days and couldn't reach a verdict. We told the judge we couldn't do it. It's a logjam, we said.

"No, that's not acceptable," said the judge. "Try harder."

In the end, we haggled four times longer than it had taken to try the case. We unanimously voted to let the guy go free, even though we knew he was probably guilty.

Which is what you should have done in the first place. The standard of proof in a criminal case is "beyond a reasonable doubt". If the issue was in so much doubt that you couldn't agree on it after several days of arguing, there must have been a reasonable doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the accused.

It was messy. Some on the jury had backed down from strongly held convictions. Nobody felt proud. But we had done the one thing society was depending on us to do. Which was make a decision.

Governor, mayor, lawmakers: Try harder.

I think that the Governor is right on this one and that Mr. Westneat is wrong. Yes, we need leadership from our representatives, but not the kind of leadership Mayor Nickels and the Seattle City Council have offered.

That crew of spoiled children has made it clear that they don't represent the people. Instead they represent their own selfish interests and desire to build a monument to their names. The Seattle City Council doesn't trust the people to make decisions when it comes to spending money, because they're afraid the people will want their money spent wisely.

After all, they want a tunnel. When it turned out that the tunnel was going to cost way more than they figured they decided the people shouldn't have a say, because the people wouldn't want to spend that much money. They knew what the people would want, so instead of representing the people they decided to represent their own selfish interests.

They've threatened to drive up the cost of any option other than a tunnel by slowing down the permitting process and with regulatory impediments. This crew doesn't represent the people. Instead they're a bunch of spoiled children, and they've threatened to take their ball and go home if they don't get to make the rules.

Governor Gregoire has decided to be an adult, and let the people decide. Danny Westneat has decided to be a child and whine that he doesn't want to have to think about it or to take a stand for what he wants because it's too hard.

Cross posted at NWBloggers.com

Trackposted to Rightwing Guy, Perri Nelson's Website, third world county, Wake Up America, basil's blog, DragonLady's World, Wake Up America, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate's Cove, Renaissance Blogger, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, and Jo's Cafe, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Update: The original version of this post did not include a link to Mr. Westneat's column. This update corrects that.

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So you think you're logical?

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 8:56 AM
Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Cool Stuff

A friend of mine sent me a link to a set of philosophical tests. I haven't been through the whole set yet, but I did take this one. It's a variant of the Wason Selection task, and there weren't very many results tabulated on the site for it yet. I managed to answer all four questions correctly, but according to the site, typically 75 to 80 percent of people taking the test get it wrong.

How will you do?

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We're back

Published Mon, Dec 18 2006 7:55 AM
Technorati Tags: Computers and Internet, Blogging, Annoyances

Well the wind storm on Thursday night knocked out my internet service at home. Service was out all weekend, and just came back this morning.

As soon as I have a chance to get caught up on what everyone has written and to catch up on the news I'll begin posting again. Well, I will after I get some of my regular work done anyway. Work has to come first after all.

So anyway, here's your open trackback post for Monday, December 18, 2006. If you've written something interesting, feel free to leave a link, just remember to follow the trackback policy.

For more exposure, please go to the blogger's oasis and use the linkfest chooser to choose the posts you'd like to hook up with.