poor-attitude.org

Did your dog dig in the yard?

Bad dog

Just in case you weren't clear on what we are selling....

Currently on TBS, that classic film Conan the Barbarian.

On TNT? Why, it's Conan the Destroyer.

So both these media outlets are owned by the same corporation, and yet they seem to be directly programming against each other. Now, show Conan 1 and 2 back to back on one channel one night, timed for the east coast, then show the same movies back to back the next night on the other channel and timed for the west coast.

Unless TNT feels C2 is a big winner on the west coast, and TBS knows that C1 fills that old school gap on the east coast, this is just incompetence in programming.

I used to think there were forces with evil intentions attempting to grasp control however they could and use the media for their own purposes, but I've recently decided that instead they are stuck with idiots for employees because everyone with a brain said something accidentally truthful and was fired.

If someone has a spare channel, and isn't making money, give me a week and I'll double your viewers. It's not hard.

Doesn't that seem like a large number?

"The Army's chief of staff said today that several hundred thousand American troops could be required to provide security and public services in Iraq after a war to oust Saddam Hussein and disarm his military."

" The magnitude of the postwar troop commitment described by the Army's top officer, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, is much larger than what other American officials have outlined. Pentagon officials have said that about 100,000 American troops may be needed in the post-Saddam phase, along with tens of thousands of additional allied forces."

McPeak interview.

The Portland Oregonian ran an interview with retired General Tony McPeak. McPeak commanded the US air forces during the first Gulf War. He is not very happy with how the current administration is handling itself.

Relevant quotes include;

"As chief of staff from 1990 to 1994, McPeak accomplished the biggest reorganization of the Air Force in its history. He believes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be dramatically transforming the military to confront the new terrorist threat, slashing redundancy and cutting heavy Army divisions in favor of agile special forces. Guarding the Washington Monument with Stinger missiles, McPeak says, is "amateur hour."

McPeak and some other retired generals caused controversy by abandoning their officers-corps' neutrality during the last presidential campaign and supporting Bush, an endorsement he regrets. Aside from Powell, whom he still respects, McPeak dismisses members of the current administration as ideologues who favor big business over the middle class, boost the federal deficit and damage the environment."

The Oregonian seems to expire news, and put old stories behind a pay per view firewall. I am going to attempt to violate their copyright for my own purposes to keep a copy of this article handy.

THE MONDAY PROFILE: A warrior's view

02/24/03
RICHARD READ

The man who headed the U.S. Air Force during Desert Storm will tell you, over black coffee in a Lake Oswego cafe, that the potential attack on Iraq is "the fight you dream about, a wonderful kind of war to have."

The former fighter pilot calls the conflict a "no brainer," pitting the U.S. military machine -- with precision-guided munitions that he conceived -- against a nation whose gross national product is dwarfed by what the Air Force spends each year.

"Everybody's going to get decorated out of this thing," says Tony McPeak, a four-star general who retired to Oregon in 1995. "Everyone comes home. It has a lot of appeal to me."

And yet McPeak will tell you, before the next coffee refill, that President Bush has botched the crucial process of building a coalition, of enlisting the United Nations and of rebuilding Afghanistan as a model of reconstruction. McPeak, who served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Bush's father and then President Clinton, says the younger Bush should publicly admit personal failure and start the diplomacy over.

"The world would breathe a sigh of relief, and we'd go back and do it right," says McPeak, 67, brown eyes flickering from a weathered face. "I mean, the world would fall in love with this guy. It's not that hard to fix."

Fighter pilots who survive as long as McPeak -- he flew two years with the Thunderbirds, the elite aerobatic team, and 269 Vietnam combat missions -- master contradictory skills: Laser-like focus and floodlight-like awareness. A pilot who fails to strike this delicate balance can develop target fixation, trying so hard to hit something that he flies right into it.

McPeak thinks past the horizon. That makes him question Bush's priorities as the president confronts terrorism, North Korea and Saddam Hussein. It makes him worry about a return to federal budget deficits and about declining goodwill toward the United States since 9/11.

"I pray that America will last another thousand years, and during all of that time we're a pre-eminent power," says McPeak, a wiry man whose Indiana Jones hat covers thinning white hair. "To do that, you have to understand the world in a more sophisticated way. You make your friends many and your enemies few."

As he speaks, a grim-faced Colin Powell, McPeak's former Joint Chiefs boss, argues 3,000 miles away with U.N. Security Council members over weapons inspections and authorization for war. But McPeak, who recalls Secretary of State James Baker carefully assembling the 1991 Persian Gulf War coalition, has other priorities on this gray February morning.

He tips back his coffee cup, grabs his hat and slides his 6-foot-1-inch frame out of the Wild Heron Cafe booth. He zips his brown leather aviator's jacket.

"I gotta go," McPeak says. Five days later, McPeak has driven to Seattle and back in a day; attended a San Jose, Calif., board meeting another day; and prepared for an overnight trip to Cannon Beach before driving to his Redmond condominium. His deep voice hoarse, he calls his yellow lab, Sophie, and strides toward the Willamette River in Lake Oswego's George Rogers Park.

Once, Gen. Merrill Anthony McPeak headed the 1 million officers, airmen and others who made up the U.S. Air Force. Once, he described himself to a reporter as a "hair-on-fire, kick-down-the-door, rip-your-face-off kind of guy." Once, he ejected from an F-100 after its wings fell off at near-supersonic speed and its engine blew up, shattering the front of the plane and spitting fire at him through the air vents.

Today, he's an anonymous guy at the park.

"Heel," he tells Sophie, who whines with excitement and falls into line. "Sit," he says quietly when they reach the water's edge.

McPeak eyes the muddy Willamette's brisk current, fingering the rope attached to the rubber float in his hand. He twirls the float and lobs it 30 feet, just far enough upstream to intersect the trajectory of a madly paddling Lab. "Fetch," he says, launching the well-trained dog like a Harpoon missile.

For all the hype over the accuracy of bombs that smashed Desert Storm targets in 1991, less than 7 percent of the munitions in that war were actually guided. And their laser- and television-guidance systems couldn't handle fog, dust or smoke.

McPeak's frustration over these munitions and their cost led to an innovation that has revolutionized warfare on a scale reminiscent of the 19th-century invention of the machine gun. Soon after Desert Storm, he jotted a note to subordinates: "We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM," shorthand for "all-weather precision-guided munition."

The general demanded an auto-pilot that could make dumb bombs smart, no matter the weather, by using global-positioning-system satellite technology commonly used today in automobile navigation. What's more, he wanted each GPS guidance package to cost no more than $20,000, a fraction of the $1 million price of a single Tomahawk missile.

Defense contractors told him the assignment was impossible. But they managed to beat McPeak's price cap and produce joint direct-attack munitions, or "jay-dams," that could strike within 10-meter accuracy.

U.S. forces reportedly dropped more than 6,600 JDAMs on Afghanistan. But the guided weapons are only as good as the intelligence that aims them: In 1999, U.S. fighter bombers unleashed JDAMs on a Belgrade target, which turned out to be the Chinese Embassy.

This time in Iraq, JDAMs would dominate the munitions mix. That's the main reason McPeak says it's possible to defeat a country such as Iraq in just a few days. He expects airstrikes to begin on a dark night in early March if the administration stays on course. Air Force planes have been bombing Iraq continuously, he notes, since January 1991.

"Now you're going to have a slightly different target set," McPeak says, "but the guys have been doing this all along."

Sophie lunges out of the water, delivering the float. "Good girl," says McPeak, and tosses it again. McPeak eases his 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee into his immaculate Lake Oswego garage, facing a pegboard neatly arrayed with tools. His wife, Elynor, a vivacious white-haired woman 13 days younger than her husband, sits in the living room near windows that face three mountains.

"I'm ready," she says in the gently teasing tone of someone who has been chided before for delaying what McPeak would call a launch time.

In fact, Ellie McPeak has been ready ever since debate class in San Diego's Hoover High School, where she met the lanky young man from Grants Pass. She stayed ready as they moved 34 times in 37 years through the United States, Europe and the Pacific. The couple raised two boys, Brian and his older brother, Mark, who until recently helped rebuild villages in Vietnam, the landscape his father once strafed and bombed.

Ellie McPeak, who earned a master's degree in economics, champions downtown redevelopment in her post on Lake Oswego's city council. Her husband, who worked his way through San Diego State College and graduated from its Reserve Officers Training Corps program, pounds in campaign lawn signs.

Moving from Washington, D.C., they've traded next-door neighbors Colin and Alma Powell for John and Judie Hammerstad, Lake Oswego's mayor.

The McPeaks still debate each other. She wishes he would quit flying, for example. In 1995, pilot Stephens Moseley, who was demonstrating an aerobatic plane that he wanted to sell to McPeak, lost a wing, crashed and died near Forest Grove.

But McPeak, a two-time recipient of both the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross, thrives on the challenge of flying a more advanced model of the kit-built plane. McPeak, who also received the Silver Star and distinguished service medals, built the tandem two-seater RV-8 with Portland executive Charles Carlbom.

"I hope he won't die that way," Ellie says of her husband's flying, "but if he should, it would be his own decision."

One issue they debate is Iraq. "The case has not been made for a pre-emptive strike," she says. "I wish we'd concentrate more on al-Qaida -- without the duct tape."

He says the test in Iraq will be whether, the day after a U.S. victory, the United States is more secure than it was before. He's not convinced it will be.

At their home, McPeak is set to go. "Ellie, can you secure the house?" he asks, and they drive off with Sophie for their overnight getaway in Cannon Beach. Halfway to the coast, McPeak takes a wrong turn, heading southwest. Instead of doubling back, he deftly threads his way north, jogs east and finds the highway.

In 1994, Ellie witnessed her husband's cool under pressure when he realized that an Army helicopter ferrying them and other military brass across France had begun circling in heavy fog. McPeak conferred with the pilot, who acknowledged trouble reaching the airport where the Air Force chief's plane waited to return them to Andrews Air Force Base.

Ellie saw McPeak direct the pilot to land. She watched cattle scatter in a meadow below. The chopper alighted, McPeak jumped out and -- speaking French learned years before in preparation for a Cambodian assignment that fizzled -- he enlisted surprised motorists to drive them to his plane.

These days, McPeak helps direct corporations, serving on the boards of companies including Tektronix, Centerspan Communications and ECC International. His management style: "You have to notice a problem and you have to fix it. But believe me, not many people do either."

His decisiveness extends to policy. In David Halberstam's latest book, "War in a Time of Peace," the best-selling author describes McPeak as early as 1992 urging his Joint Chiefs peers to recommend airstrikes on marauding Serbs in Bosnia.

As chief of staff from 1990 to 1994, McPeak accomplished the biggest reorganization of the Air Force in its history. He believes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be dramatically transforming the military to confront the new terrorist threat, slashing redundancy and cutting heavy Army divisions in favor of agile special forces. Guarding the Washington Monument with Stinger missiles, McPeak says, is "amateur hour."

McPeak thinks U.S. forces may well encounter biological weapons in Iraq but not chemical munitions, which are difficult to deploy. "I regard the nuclear threat as zero," he says. "I regard the connection between Saddam and al-Qaida as less than zero."

Airstrikes would wipe out Baghdad's communications system again, McPeak says. "If we go in there and occupy the place for 50 years, which is my prediction, we'll have to rebuild it."

Close combat in Baghdad would be stupid, he says, despite what Army generals may advocate. "We've already radicalized 99 percent of the Arabs in the world. We'll get the holdouts if we start doing hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad."

McPeak and some other retired generals caused controversy by abandoning their officers-corps' neutrality during the last presidential campaign and supporting Bush, an endorsement he regrets. Aside from Powell, whom he still respects, McPeak dismisses members of the current administration as ideologues who favor big business over the middle class, boost the federal deficit and damage the environment.

Back in the car, the McPeaks reach Cannon Beach. They turn off U.S. 101, drop down the hill into town and find the hotel. He walks the dog. She checks in. Facing the ocean spray, he chucks the float for Sophie.

Once, McPeak commanded the Pacific Air Forces, which stretch from Alaska to Southeast Asia. Today he walks a short stretch of sand by the Pacific surf.

McPeak has spent a lifetime thinking, training, conducting and dreaming about fighting in the air. Despite his demanding new career and his misgivings surrounding Iraq, he admits missing the action as war looms.

"I feel like I'd like to climb back in the cockpit," he says, "and do what fighter pilots do."

Richard Read: 503-294-5135; richread@aol.com.

More MT details.

Attemtpting to deal with trackbacks. Hopefully these things are working. Let's see.

More Maps We'll Need.

The Agonist seems to have some sort of Annex, and it includes some maps that may prove useful for our map collection.

Charles Dodgson doing more yeoman work as a collector of useful cruft.

Up and Comer.

D-Squared Digest seems to be enjoying his comments section quite a bit.

"Hell fucking fire, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard. In a post-victory environment, the unlisteningest administration in recent history is going to be listening to college kids lobbying on an issue nobody cares about any more? Face it, fellers, it's a choice between "what we have now" and "what's in the box"."

Should Have Paid More Attention to His Surroundings.

Jeff's deer mount.

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Consistently best thing on Salon.

In my opinion the Ask the Pilot column in Salon has been the most consistent performer out of their whole catalog.

Patrick Smith's facts and insights into the unseen world of commercial flight is interesting enough, but I most like the way he gives up those little nuggets of himself, relating his pride in his skills and how that conflicts with his inability to make a living at his profession. I think he is a pretty brave writer for a pilot.

MeFi produces results.

How do internet name servers work?

More things we'll need.

John Edwards and the Lakey case.

I'm just guessing this is going to be something I'll be needing later.

Fire in the Hole.

Well, technically down the block. My sister says nothing is supposed to happen in the boondocks, but this 4 alarm fire was two doors down from our internet business. Mucho nervousness.

Updated, and Testing.

Enabled pings and trackbacks, as well as notifying weblog.com. This is just a test post to see if it's actually doing anything.

The Fire Last Time.

One of the more interesting documents to come out of the federal government in the last decade was the General Accounting Office's Report number PEMD-96-10, titled Operation Desert Storm: Operation Desert Storm Air War.

"Only 8 percent of the delivered munitions tonnage was guided, but at
a price that represented 84 percent of the total munitions cost. During Desert Storm, the ratio of guided-to- unguided munitions delivered did not vary, indicating that the relative preferences among these types of munitions did not change over the course of the campaign. More generally, Desert Storm demonstrated that many systems incorporating complex or advanced technologies require specific operating conditions to operate effectively. These
conditions, however, were not consistently encountered in Desert Storm and cannot be assumed in future contingencies.

Lastly, many of DOD's and manufacturers' postwar claims about weapon system performance--particularly the F-117, TLAM, and laser-guided bombs--were overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data, or unverifiable."

Read it yourself. It's a good thing to know what actually happened the last time we were shooting at Iraqi targets.

Google buys Blogger.

Wow. Somebody at Google decided that weblogs have an actual monetary value. Since Google are no dummies, maybe they actually do have value.

This could change a lot of things. I suspect that Blogger will be available off of Google's main page. This could result in about 5 times as many people writing online journals. People with expertise in one special field can post updates to their weblog only when specific news relates to their field, and these items can float right to the top of Google searches. Should be most interesting.

Old men got time in.

Watching Portland screw Boston into the ground tonight, and who is still mixing it up but Scottie Pippen.

You remember Scottie. Lots of people said he was just carried around by Jordan when the Bulls were having their way with the league. I don't know if I buy that, because Scottie is still doign the same things he did before. He made one of the best 3/4 court passes I've ever seen, and didn't even look like he was trying.

I think he has become a better player as an old player than he might have been as a hot tempered young player with something to prove.

Strange how these things work out. He really looks relaxed, settled right into the game, and knows exactly what is happening on the court. It's fun to watch and old player come into his own at the end of his career.

Orange Alert!

Apparently there was news that the current alert was caused by some prisoner stating that there would be a dirty bomb attack in the US. Well, that appears to have been complete bullshit.

But we're staying on orange alert anyway.

It also appears that the current administration seems it might have forgotten something in it's most recent budget proposal. The little something? Why, aid to Afghanistan, of course.

" But in its budget proposals for 2003, the White House did not explicitly ask for any money to aid humanitarian and reconstruction costs in the impoverished country. "

"The chairman of the committee that distributes foreign aid, Jim Kolbe, says that when he asked administration officials why they had not requested any funds, he was given no satisfactory explanation, but did get a pledge that it would not happen again. "

Again, let me repeat my assertion that the legacy of this current administration will be it's incompetence.

Innumeracy in engineers.

Stephen Den Beste's bio page states;

"...or I could drop out and take a standing offer of an Engineer's position at Tektronix at a salary of $12,900 per year. Wealth beyond my wildest imaginings!

These days I pay nearly that much each year in Social Security taxes."

OK, let's weigh his burden. This page lists maximum Social Security liabilities in 2000.

Looks like the maximum Social Security tax for an employee is $4,984.80. Let's give him another grand, and round up, and call it $6000. A little short of $12,900, isn't it?

Well, what about Medicare? That's 1.45% of gross income, with no upper limit on income taxed. Can we make up the $6,900 difference with that? Well, only if we have a total of $475,862 in gross income. Den Beste may make that type of money, but if he does then a $12,900 Social Security tax burden is not exactly a great strain, is it? In fact, it would be exactly 2.7% of his gross income. For comparison, a household with $50K in gross income as an employee would be paying 7.65%, or over 2.5 times the percentage of income paid by that person with the $400+K gross income.

Maybe Stephen is self-employed? That would certainly change things, wouldn't it? Self employed people pay the employers contribution to Social Security. The same page linked above shows us the maximum Social Security tax for self employed filers is $9,969.60. That's getting closer to $12,900, but is still only 77% of $12,900. Plus Medicare? Self employed people pay 2.9% of their gross income to Medicare taxes, so at $80K/annum gross, Den Beste is liable for another $2320, taking his total to $12289.60. That's pretty close to $12,900.

So, if he was self-employed, and making $80,000 a year, then he is telling the unvarnished truth, he does have a Social Security tax liability almost equal to his initial salary at Techtronix in 1975.

If he was not self-employed, then he is counting his employers portion of his liability on his Social Security taxes. Anything in the bio about that?

"I was most recently employed by Qualcomm...."

Sounds like he was an employee, but it may have been contract work. And he concludes the above statement:

"but I am not currently employed."

Doesn't sound self-employed to me. Us self-employed people are never "unemployed", we just don't have work available currently.

My guess is that Stephen likes to count his employers liability for his Social Security tax burden as part of what he "pays" because it sounds better.

I also suspect he wishes he didn't have to pay any Social Security taxes. Congratulations, lucky unemployed ducky, your wish is granted.

Maps we might need.

Time to start collecting maps we will need.

This is Iraq, via DailyKos, who apparently got it from Lonely Planet, of all places.

Finally, sensible tax talk!

The current administration has included in it's annual economic report to Congress a proposal to replace income tax with a consumption tax.

So, you can save taxes by not buying things, and invest the savings in companies paying dividends, that would be tax free, from companies that are returning profits to shareholders, after earning these profits by selling things to people.

Probably a bunch of whacked-out insiders shoving around some wet dream they have, right?

The report was "prepared by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and signed by Mr. Bush".

This would result in a tax hike for the great majority of Americans, but I bet you'll never hear that from the current administration or it's supporters.

Duck and cover.

So my buddy, the Politically Uninformed Union Worker calls me last night.

PUUW: "So, are we at some sort of alert or warning or something?"

Me: "Uhm, yeah, orange alert, go buy duct tape and plastic sheeting."

PUUW: "Uhm, I have that stuff already. What the heck is this warning about, and why would I need duct tape and plastic sheeting?"

Me: "The federal government has raised the warning status for posssible terrorist attacks to the second level from the top, and they won't say why, and it's not clear what duct tape and sheeting is for, but they want you to be prepared to seal up one room and have at least three days of supplies."

PUUW: "Oh. My girlfriend said she heard all about this at the VFW where she works."

Me: "And?"

PUUW: "And they said Osama came out and said he and Saddam were buddies."

Me: "Iraq went to war with Iran in the middle 80's, killing about a million people on each side, over the fact that Iran was run by religious fundamentalists that wanted to have all of the Middle East under Islamic fundamentalist rulers. Including Iraq, which is under dictatorial, but not religious fundamentalist rule. That's why we supported Saddam before we didn't support him. Do you think Osama is going to be buddies with a guy that fought a war opposing religious fundamentalists? More importantly, do you think Saddam is going to be buddies with a religious fundamentalist that wants Iraq turned into a religious state, run by clerics, instead of Saddam?"

PUUW: "See, what you said makes sense. Sounds like a whole herd of scorpions in a bottle, and I don't remember too many scorpions having friends among the other scorpions in a bottle."

Me: "Sounds about right to me."

PUUW: "So what the hell is going on?"

Me: "Got me, what do you think is going on?"

PUUW: "I think everybody is fucking nuts."

Me; "Could very well be."

PUUW: "Good thing I got duct tape, eh?"

Me: "Yeah, beat the rush."

How much?

PLA is good blog, with lot's of reasonable questions.

Today they were wondering if the $3 million proposed budget for investigating 9/11 was profligate, just right, or short changed. So they compared it to the costs of other recent investigations.

We agree wholeheartedly with their conclusions. Judge for yourself.

Hoo boy.

Guernica Reproduction Covered at UN

"A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings."

How's about that for a culture war? via RuminateThis

World Rally: Racing for Crazy People

Take a good look at this picture.

See the racer about to drive off the hill because he missed the bridge? That's what World Rally Racing looks like every once in a while.

WRC racers can usually be found driving 450HP 4 wheel drive cars literally all over the world. This photo is from the first rally of this season in Monte Carlo. Next rally is in Sweden, and after that they're all over the world. Like Turkey and New Zealand all over the world.

And while they are racing they are usually racing past rock walls, cliffs, forests, cars parked by the side of the road. In Monte Carlo I saw them doing about 80 mph past a giant tractor with it's extremely large and exceedingly sturdy looking rear-end facing oncoming traffic while parked on the shoulder.

And see the guy about to fall into the river up above? Well, he managed to get stopped, jammed it in reverse, hauled ass on down the road, and finished second in that stage.

Like I said, crazy people.

Need this stored here for later.

Shuttle thread.

Shuttle breaks up on re-entry over Texas.

Speculation seems to be centering on burn through on the left wing.

Stolen from Kevin Drum, and rotated.