The Least Likely Democrat to Tell the Truth and to not Backtrack About it Is………

That would be Mary Landrieu, who said that part of the hostility against Obama in the South had its roots in racism, that's the truth bit, and now she has refused to apologize for speaking the truth:

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu made conservative heads explode by stating a truth, that the South has not always been the friendliest place go African-Americans and to women. Landrieu's campaign put out a press release standing by her comments.

This is a level of guts and honesty that I would never have expected of her.

The World Just Got a bit Less Funny, and a Lot Less Weird

Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today

Tom Magliozzi, the older, taller half of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, died today at 77 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Tom and his brother Ray Magliozzi first broadcast their public radio call-in show Car Talk in 1977 from the studios of WBUR in Boston.

They offered advice on cars and life, but it was the duo’s sense of humor and Tom’s iconic laugh that made the show so memorable for millions of fans across the country.

NPR began distributing Car Talk nationally in 1987. More than 4 million people tuned in each week, making it one of public radio’s most successful shows ever.

I was actually was on Car Talk once, in 1997.

I asked them about the edibility of automotive fluids, which, come to think of it, may explain how my writing style developed.

This is the Best Monday of the Year

The Monday when Standard Time resumes.

I hate Daylight Savings Time.

Finally………

Brazil has finally made its selection of the Saab Gripen for their air force:

Buying a new jet fighter can be a long-drawn-out process. Brazil, after many years of planning and procrastination, has finally signed a contract for its future combat aircraft.

Officials from the Brazilian Defense Ministry’s Aeronautics Command and the Swedish Saab Group put pen to paper recently, and the Brazilian air force is now set to receive 36 Gripen NG fighters.

The jets, worth a little over $5.4 billion, include 28 single-seat Gripen Es and eight twin-seat Gripen F aircraft. Deliveries will begin in 2019 and will be completed in 2024.

………

In late 2007, the government formally relaunched the new fighter project, and at the time excepted to acquire 36 multi-role jets at a cost of $2.2 billion. By July 2008 the F-X2 project had split into two phases. In the first, Brazil would get 36 new fighters, blowing the $2.2 billion budget.

………

By September 2009 it looked as if the twin-engined Rafale had cinched F-X2. Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the Rafale’s victory even before the competition was over. Saab and Boeing were both furious, and Lula instead declared that the government would delay the F-X2 decision until after a new president took office.

In January 2011, new president Dilma Rousseff deferred the decision to 2012 owing to budgetary problems. As the defense budget began to feel the cutbacks, the pricey Rafale started to lose its edge. At this stage, the program cost ballooned to $8 billion. Rousseff launched new comparative studies and called upon Embraer for its opinion.

The two cheapest options now became the front-runners. The Super Hornet offer—for 36 fighters—was for $7.5 billion, while the Gripen offer cost $6 billion. The Rafale offer exceeded $8 billion.

There are a number of ways to cost aircraft, and it can vary by a lot.

The numbers here run to about $150 million a plane, which I believe is the total weapons system cost, while the quotes that we normally see in the press for US systems are flyaway costs, which looks to run something like 50% of total system cost, so this is actually significantly cheaper than the F-35 JSF.

Still, $150 million a pop?

That's a big jump from the less than $5 million that the F-4 Phantom in its heyday.

Eric Arthur Blair* Would be Appalled

At the Guantanamo show trials, defense attorneys are being asked to respond to motions that they are not allowed to read:

Despite enormous logistical and legal hurdles, defense attorneys for high value detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, say they press on for the judgment of history, if not for a fair turn before the embattled military commissions that substitute for trials in federal court.

Attorneys for alleged 9/11 attack planners Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh and alleged USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri described their challenges to an audience gathered by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in Manhattan on Wednesday night.

Even though all the defense attorneys are vetted and cleared to access Top Secret documents, they agree that secrecy remains the root of most delays and dysfunction.

“If you sat down to design a system and said, ‘I want to create a legal system where everything will move slowly, glacially,’ you would design this,” said Richard Kammen, who represents al-Nashiri. For example, if Kammen, who is based in Indianapolis, wants to read a classified court document, he must travel to a secure facility in Washington, D.C. to do so. Once, Kammen said, he was ordered to respond to motions he was not allowed to read.

Even when the attorneys are at Guantanamo to meet in person with their clients, a detainee’s own words are considered secret.

“We were told that anything that came out of client’s mouths were considered to be ‘presumptively classified,’” said Jason Wright, who represented KSM until this August. “This phrase ‘presumptive classification’ is something that has never existed before in the laws of the United States.”

To make sure he understood, Wright, a former Army JAG, received a power point presentation at Guantanamo.

“I had a briefer who told me, when you meet with your high value detainee, you have to treat everything that he says as presumptively classified – every word, every utterance, every gesture,” Wright recalled.

“I said, ‘Hypothetically, what if he told me he liked peanut butter sandwiches? Is that classified?’”

“Yes,” he was told.

(emphasis mine)

This is a blot on American jurisprudence and the rule of law.

It is lawless, uncivilized, and cowardly.

^*George Orwell's real name.

The Pentagon wants its War, and Now they are Waging a War of Leaks

We now get leaks of the military complaining that the Obama administration is "micromanaging" operations in Iraq and Syria:

Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

………

Other gripes among the top Pentagon and military brass are about the White House’s decision not to work with what’s left of the existing Syrian moderate opposition on the ground, which prevents intelligence sharing on fighting ISIS and prevents the military from using trained fighters to build the new rebel army that President Obama has said is needed to push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into a political negotiation to end the conflict.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel himself is among the critics of Obama’s strategy in Syria. Hagel wrote a memo last week to Rice warning that Obama’s Syria strategy was unclear about U.S. intentions with respect to Assad, undermining the plan.

What is going on here is that the Pentagon, including Hegel want the US to move aggressively for regime change in Syria, because they feel that it is their God given right to wage war with, and overthrow, whoever they want.

We've seen what happens if they get their way, the clusterf%$#s that are commonly known as Iraq and Libya.

The fact that the adults in the White House (there is an expression I never thought that I would say) are telling the war mongers in the Pentagon that they cannot topple yet another government just because, they are leaking to the press.

Thank You Chelsea Handler

Comedienne Chelsea Handler posted a parody of Putin's shirtless horseback photo to Instagram, and was justifiably pissed off when they took the image down, (NSFW pic at link) and has dumped Instagram for Twitter in response.

I understand, and I agree with her basic point, but this is not why I am thanking her.

I am thanking her for showing us her breasts.

I believe that a woman voluntarily, and proudly, showing her breasts is an independent good. (No, I have not seen the stolen photographs of Jennifer Lawrence, etc., and I find the involuntary posting of these sorts of pics to be an unconscionable violation of privacy)

I consider it to be a very public gift, and so I am writing this note to thank her.