Sunday Funnies

Nancy ka'bonked by Governance LoP

Rep. Pelosi (D-CA), please call your office.

The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday passed three key measures that for months had been the subject of bickering that threatened to undermine the country's political process.

The legislation cleared the way for provincial elections, approved the 2008 budget and granted a limited amnesty that will affect thousands of detainees. The proposals were bundled together and passed in a single vote.
...
Sunni politicians wanted the amnesty law because Sunnis make up the vast majority of detainees in Iraq's jails. Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the largest Sunni political bloc, said the law would "free a huge number of innocent detainees who spent a long time inside the prisons." Iraqi prisoners in U.S. custody, he added, would be transferred to Iraqi prisons so they would be covered by the law.

The Kurds were pleased with the budget because it allocated 17 percent of the nation's revenue to their regional government. Sunni and Shiite lawmakers had sought to lower the Kurds' share to 14 percent, in their belief that Kurds make up as little as 13 percent of the country's population. But the Kurds reacted furiously to the proposal.

The breakthrough, officials said, apparently came when the Kurds agreed that their share of 17 percent would be reconsidered for the 2009 budget.

"We are totally satisfied with the laws approved today and we don't have any reservations on the amnesty law because it's a good step on the road of the national reconciliation," said Fouad Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc in the parliament. "The budget law is very important because every state should have its own budget."

Shiites have long wanted provincial elections because they want power to devolve to the provinces and away from the central government. The law passed Wednesday had initially stated that voting would begin Oct. 1. But details on that law, as well as the two other measures, were unclear because last-minute changes had been made to the drafts, officials said.

The measures need to be approved by the three-member presidential council, but are likely to be accepted. Approval of the law on provincial elections marked the passage of only the second of 18 legislative benchmarks that the Bush administration sees as vital to political reconciliation in Iraq.

Also Madam Speaker; remember your year in our Legislature kind of sounds like this..

The bundling of the proposals, however, underscored the deep divisions among Iraq's political parties. None trusted the others to pass the three laws separately, each fearing that the measure it cared most about would fail.

"There's no negotiating with faith and trust between the blocs," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish legislator. "They are afraid to pass one law before the other. They fear each other. It's a shame that our democracy in Iraq is like this."

Gen. Petraeus says it well, methinks.

"The passage of the three laws today showed that the Iraqi leaders are now taking advantage of the opportunity that coalition and Iraqi troopers fought so hard to provide," Gen. David H. Petraeus said in an interview.

Nuff said.

More must die

Joel Arends over at The Tank just puts it about right WRT what the Democrat controlled Congress did last night. They just don't get it.

We are fighting the same terrorists that recently strapped bombs onto women with Down's Syndrome and forced them to walk into a crowded marketplace and explode the bombs, killing themselves and dozens of other innocent women and children.

My comrades in uniform, brothers and sisters and moms and dads, have given their lives in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. This Congress, meanwhile, refuses to authorize our intelligence officials to collect important information that can disrupt terror attacks and refuses to give our law enforcement community the legal authority it never had before 9/11, but so desperately needed.

Today, because Congress failed to act, our intelligence officials no longer have the legal authority to collect foreign intelligence. Exactly the type of intelligence that disrupted several planned terrorists attacks on the United States. Because we face a very real threat to the national security of this country, we must take very real measures to protect our citizens and give our soldiers and our allies around the world the tools they need to keep us safe.

When will our Congress begin to display even a small amount of the courage that our men women fighting for us display day in and day out? Their refusal to reauthorize this legislation is more than an act of submission to trial lawyers, Moveon.org, and the far-left wing of a party that fails to recognize that we face deadly threats from radical Islamic terrorists. Its an act of political cowardice. It's a sign of an unwillingness to respect the sacrifices made by the members of the military who need that intelligence to successfully accomplish their mission.

I guess it has been too long. Maybe they have adult ADD. Perhaps thousands of American civilians need to die every few years to remind them. Shame.

What did your Representative do? If you are not pleased with their action, do they know?

Get thee to a SM-3

See, if you read CDR Salamander yesterday, you would have been the first kid on the block to know; let that be a lesson to you all.

It's official.

The Pentagon today announced that a Navy warship has been tasked with shooting down a failing United States spy satellite that, if left alone, was expected to hit Earth within weeks.

In a joint news conference, NASA administrator Michael Griffith and Gen. James Cartwright, the No. 2 officer at the Defense Department, announced that an SM-3 missile, designed to hit inbound ballistic missiles, will be fired from a Navy cruiser or destroyer during the next month to obliterate the inbound spacecraft. The idea is to break apart the satellite to rid it of toxic fuel onboard by smashing its tank, which is the largest intact piece left. If successful, it would be the first direct U.S. test against a satellite since 1985, when an F-15 climbed to 80,000 ft. to fire a three-stage missile at a defunct solar-monitoring platform in low-Earth orbit.

OK fellas; let's get out the lineal numbers.

Fullbore Friday

Take a look at these men and then their old, humble 4-stack DD-219, the USS EDSALL, the official Navy page does not do them justice, this one is better, go there for her epic start of the war, but for now - lets just look how she went out, in the end Commanded by Lieutenant (or LCDR depending on the source) J.J. Nix of Memphis TN, in one of the most untold stories of heroism in US Navy history. From the USS HOUSTON (CA-30) site,

Three days earlier, on February 25, Admiral Nagumo’s Carrier Strike Force (carriers Soryu and Akagi) sortied from Staring Bay at Kendari, Celebes, and entered the Indian Ocean with the mission “to cut off any escape of the Allied Forces.”

Nagumo’s Support Force consisted of the Third Battleship Division (battleship Hiei and Kirishima) and the Eighth Cruiser Division (heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma).As fate would have it, destroyer Edsall had the misfortune to meet this formidable force on the afternoon of March 1, 1942.

At a position about 250 miles southsoutheast of Christmas Island the cruiser Tone was the first to spot Edsall at a distance of 15 miles to the northwest. Twelve minutes later Chikuma sighted Edsall too, turned, and opened fire with her 8-inch guns at 1730. The range was extremely long at 21,000 meters (11 nautical miles) and all shots missed. Immediately, Edsall’s skipper, Lieutenant Joshua Nix of Memphis, Tennessee, laid down a smokescreen and began a series of evasive maneuvers that were to frustrate the Japanese for the next hour and a half.

At 1747 battleships Hiei and Kirishima opened fire with their main batteries of 14-inch guns and ordered all units to attack the American destroyer. They began firing at a range of 27,000 meters (14-1/2 nautical miles) and their shots also
missed the target. At 1756 Lieutenant Nix courageously turned his ship directly toward Chikuma and closed the range so as to fire his 4- inch guns, but his shots fell short.

Chikuma stopped firing at 1800 when she entered a rain squall and Edsall laid down smoke. However, the intensive fire from all four Japanese ships resumed when the hapless American ship became visible again. Because they were shooting at
such long ranges, Lieutenant Nix was able to observe the flash of the guns and turn his ship in time to avoid being hit. He did so approximately every minute. He also abruptly varied his speed from 30 knots to full stop and back again, while making turns as wide as 360- degrees. Since Edsall had suffered damage earlier off Java when one of her depth charges exploded too close astern, her performance had been reduced and there was no hope for her to outrun the enemy and try to escape.
She could only stay on station and avoid destruction as long as possible.

Japanese naval gunnery was relatively poor during the early stages of the war, often wasteful and ineffective. The attack on Edsall was a prime example. The official history of Japan’s navy states that some 1400 rounds were fired in the engagement
but, until near the end of the battle, only one round found its mark. However, the action reports of Tone and Chikuma show that two direct hits (meichu) were made on Edsall, one by Hiei at 1824 and another by Tone at 1835. Still, this is an extremely bad percentage and much of it is to the credit of Lieutenant Nix’s superb ship handling under the worst possible circumstances.

So frustrated were the Japanese commanders after an hour had passed that an order went out to the nearby Carrier Strike Force for the assistance of aircraft. Nine dive-bombers from Soryu and eight from Akagi attacked Edsall from 1827 to 1850, even while she made smoke for the fourth time. The planes scored a number of hits with eight 550-pound bombs and nine 1100-pound bombs, setting Edsall on fire in what he Japanese called a raging conflagration (kasai). Whether because the destroyer was now out of control or Lieutenant Nix made a final courageous gesture of defiance, Edsall now turned directly toward her pursers and came dead in the water.

The battleships and cruisers pounded her relentlessly with their secondary batteries until she went down at 1900 in position 13-45S 106-45E, 430 miles south of Java.
Cruiser Chikuma picked up an undetermined number of survivors, possibly as many as five.

Under interrogation they revealed the name of their ship, which appears in Chikuma’s log as “Edosooru.”

The Edsall survivors were taken to a POW camp on Celebes and nothing further was ever heard from them. After the war, the Army Graves Registration Service identified the remains of five sailors from the ship: F1 Sidney Amory, MM1 Horace Andrus, MM2 J.R. Cameron, MM3 Larry Vandiver, and F1 Donald Watters.

Lieutenant Nix and his crew never received any official recognition for their heroic stand, which was in the finest tradition of the United States Navy.

Captain Nix; you and your Sailors were Fullbore to the core. BZ.

Obama's "flagg'n" problems

Some Obama supporters have been just all snitty that anyone should have a problem with Obama's supporter's Che fetish. Some have even scolded here when I mentioned it, saying it is just being "foolish young'sters" that Saint Obama would simply have nothing to do with.

Well, as is often the case - things are a little more complicated than they appear. Remember her?

She isn't a random Communist-lust'n useful idiot who just happens to support Obama, no. Thanks to Bluto, we now know she is Maria Isabel, his Precinct Captain.

The Lone Star Times has all sorts of goodies on Maria, but this is my favorite. A nice picture of the Precinct Captain.

For those who still want to fling stuff at the messenger; I will simply pull a quote of my own from Stephen's place.

In the end, she is just another useful idiot trying to find some way of feeling better about herself by standing in Sen. Obama's glow. The only reason I have gone back to it, again, is to shoot back at those who support Obama who shot back that "this was just a young student," or "some unknown, unofficial supporter" etc. She is Maria Isabel. She is a Precinct Captain. She has a spot on the official (correction-not an official site, but still.....) Obama website. She is fair game.

Let's be honest here, if it was a Confederate Flag, Odin's Cross, or Amos & Andy playing on a loop on the TV at a McCain or Paul office, it would be blogworthy.

This isn't Saint Worship - this is a primary. An American primary where we as a nation sort the candidates and their supporters out. Just because it opens up some uncomfortable truths (i.e. a lot of the a near-fringe Left in this nation supports Obama), doesn't mean that we should scold those who point and say, "Dude, look, his fly is open...."

Cowboy up; facts are hard things.

I like Obama A LOT, mostly because he is the best way to get rid of the Clintons - but that doesn't mean I am going to pretend things aren't there. One of those thing is that Maria is one of the best thing going right now to solidify the vote for McCain in Florida with the computer literate.

Hat tip Howie at Jawa, who is all over this.

It takes a Navy.....

.......... to clean up the USAF's mess....

U.S. officials say the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March.

The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a Pentagon briefing later Thursday.

Now that is a mission any Aegis man would fight for.....