Month: July 2008

Washington Post snorts up some Kool-Aid

The Washington Post shocked the political world today by issuing an editorial that actually called into question something said by Barrack Obama. Yesterday in a major foreign policy speech Barrack Obama issued / clarified / refined / changed / altered / enhanced (you pick) his current view on the withdraw of US forces. The Post (and it’s even hard to type this) called his view ‘irrational’.

Obama departs on a fact-finding trip next week where he’ll meet with commanders on the ground, despite the conclusions he has already reached in his speech.

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Despite melting ice caps Coast Guard needs more funds for icebreakers.

I thought the North Pole was melting…

The Coast Guard was up on Capitol Hill begging for more money to enhance and replace parts of the aging Arctic ice breaker fleet. Two of the vessels are nearly 30 years old and costing more and more to keep afloat, and the typical Washington bureaucratic shuffle now means the Coast Guards’ icebreaking funds are no longer directly controlled by the Coast Guard (long boring story).

In contrast, the Russians have a decided advantage in ice breaking skills with 8 nuclear powered cutters operating in their waters, plowing the way for their oil companies to rush into the Arctic ahead of our oil companies.

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9 US soldiers died defending a base last week which we abandoned today

Shades of some LZ’s in Vietnam…

U.S. forces abandoned the outpost in northeastern Afghanistan where nine American soldiers were killed in a heavy attack by insurgents three days ago, NATO officials said Wednesday.

The withdrawal handed a propaganda victory to the Taliban, and insurgents were quick to move into the village of Wanat beside the abandoned outpost, Afghan officials said. Insurgent fighters nearly overran the barely-built outpost in a dawn raid on Sunday, inflicting the biggest single loss of life for United States forces in Afghanistan since 2005….

A small force of only 45 American soldiers and 25 Afghans had occupied the Wanat outpost for just a few days before the attack Sunday. Outnumbered by militants they were nearly overrun and fought a four-hour pitched battle before the Taliban were repelled. Nine American soldiers were killed and 15 wounded. Four Afghans soldiers were also wounded

To be fair, it wasn’t a major base and US troops didn’t have the numbers they needed. The fact that they were able to hold off a numerically superior force is a testament to their abilities and the power of joint warfighting (i.e. aircraft and helicopters balancing out the equation).

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All 3 Network Anchors join Obama on European Road Trip / Media love-in

Ok, this is just ridiculous…

In case you haven’t noticed, or are drunk on the Kool-Aid, the media kind of worships Obama. Just a few weeks ago when John McCain was in Colombia at the same time as the release of the US captives held by the FARC, instead of talking to McCain about his trip and the release, the media was gushing about how great it was Obama was at a soccer game with his daughters.

Now the great European roadtrip by Obama is going to be filled with high profile media guys, including all three network anchors.

Senator John McCain’s trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the “in other political news” portion of his newscast.

But when Obama heads for Iraq and other locations overseas this summer, Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Obama on successive nights.

Give me a break…

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Offshore Windmill cables cost $1000 per foot.

DANG!

So you know they want to put windmills off the coasts of most US cities, and the residents are constantly balking because their view will be ‘ruined’ by these 25 story monsters spinning day and night. I’ve always wondered why they just didn’t throw them even further offshore, and now I know.

Connecting cables from windmills to the shore facilities cost approximately $1,000 per foot.

The Annapolis Capitol has a story today about a new windmill farm in Ocean City, Maryland. I can only guess the installation is part of the reason for the huge price.

Pushing the turbines farther out to sea makes the project more expensive — it costs $1,000 for every foot of cable connecting the wind farm to the shore. There will be four such cables, Lanard said, stretching 12 miles each, at a cost of about $253 million.

If Bluewater installed turbines at the three-mile minimum, where federal waters begin, the cable would cost about $63 million.

So basically we’re saying the view from Ocean City out over the ocean is worth $190 million? God knows the view from the ocean of Ocean City, with all the t-shirt and ice cream stores, isn’t surely worth that much.

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Apple gives everyone free month due to MobileMe problems

Just got an email from Apple apologizing for all the screw ups in Mobile Me’s launch. As a result I’m getting an extra month free. Not bad, considering I haven’t even begun to use the service just yet.

MobileMe services are now available.
We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.
Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.
Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.
Thank you,
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