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TGIF/Weekend
Edition -- November 19-21, 2004 |
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Kill the
messenger. Jail the messenger. Fire the messenger. Then there will be no
messages.
"President
Bush was going to pardon the presidential turkey. But before he could pardon
him, he resigned." -- David Letterman
"The thief's purpose is
to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness."
– Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:10
The-World-Is-A-Safer-Place-Without-Saddam News
Dave Casey
The Large Editor
Battle of hawks brewing
Watch for the ultra-hawks to
further restrict the news media – both in combat zones and back on the home
front – during Dubya’s second term.
As if photos of U.S.
flag-draped coffins and of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib weren’t enough to drive
some far right-wingers over the edge, now comes videotape of a Marine killing a
wounded, unarmed Iraqi insurgent at pointblank range.
The ultra-hawks – many of the
chickenhawk, blindhawk or greedhawk breeds – are nearly frothing at the mouth as
they continue trying to justify extreme treatment of enemy combatants, mounting
allied losses and the Iraq war in general.
“The Marine was acting in
self-defense because he had been shot at before by insurgents pretending to be
wounded,” says the chickenhawk, who never served in the military but is an
expert on warfare and the rules of engagement. “How can I ask the sons and
daughters of my fellow Americans to risk their lives in combat if they might be
prosecuted for killing prisoners? My boy, incidentally, starts med school next
semester.”
The blindhawk (dumbirdius
patrioticus) takes a simpler stance: “It’s them or us. They can run, but they
can’t hide. Iraq was involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and the insurgents
hate Americana for their freedom. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.
Osama who?”
The greedhawk (warbirdius
profiteerus) takes a more complicated position: “We’re in Iraq to make it safe
for democracy and oil production. That insurgent probably would have voted
against our puppet candidates. The Marine involved should be given a medal and
reassigned to more important duty, like guarding a Halliburton fuel truck convoy
or a pipeline.”
So we’ll see the same old tired
response by ultra-hawks when a conflict doesn’t go quite the way they expected:
Kill the messenger. If the damn liberal news media wasn’t there taking pictures,
Americans wouldn’t be exposed to the discomfiting violence of war. And they
might not ask so many questions.
At this point, there would be a
terrible squabble among the hawks about press restriction, because there are
many more breeds than the three mentioned previously.
Foxhawks would say, “If TV
crews are no longer imbedded with U.S. troops, we won’t be able to promote the
war on our network with such fervor. We need striking images of combat and
heroism to keep selling this war to the public! How about if we agree to let the
Pentagon edit our film? Could we stay then?”
Warriorhawks like Sen. John
McCain and former Sen. Max Cleland also would oppose further restrictions on the
news media. This breed is nearly extinct in the Bush administration now that
Secretary of State Colin Powell has resigned.
These hawks have been
there-done that, when it comes to war. They suffered wounds, imprisonment or
torture for their beloved nation. And they would oppose muzzling the news media
because the First Amendment was one of the things for which they fought.
E-mail
Dave
"It's
kind of weird. Bush wins the election and everyone is leaving. In fact the Bush
twins are being replaced by the Hilton sisters." -- David Letterman
Graphic by the Great Oz
E-Mail
Subject: Aunt
Jemima
You guys were
ahead of the game.
Radio host calls Rice 'Aunt Jemima'
Seattle Post Intelligencer, WA -
11-18-04
MILWAUKEE -- A radio talk show host drew criticism Thursday ... The station's
corporate office received about 100 calls about his comments, Sylvester said.
Joe -
California
Why is it wrong to use Aunt Jemima, yet OK for
Bush to use Jesus?
President Carter: PEACE TREATY BETWEEN ISRAEL AND EGYPT (March 26, 1979)
President
George H. W. Bush: No peace accords or pacts. Gulf War I and Invasion of Panama.
President
George W. Bush: No peace accords or pacts. Afghanistan War and preemptive
strike on Iraq.
Disturbing News
E-Mail
Dear Lisa
You wrote “All this wonderful technology should be put to better use.”
Sorry to disabuse you but this ‘wonderful technology’ is, I believe, part of the
most significant contributor to global warming, the unrestrained use of jet
engines. (I know the scramjet is different, no moving parts etc., but it’s the
operating temperature - 1300 – 3000 degrees Celsius). Basically, the faster you
fly, the hotter the vehicle gets. To prepare for Tuesday's test, engineers
reinforced the X-43A's nose and the leading edges of its wings and tail with
extra carbon thermal coating, like that used on space shuttles. The temperature
at these points was expected to reach two-thousand degrees Celsius, about
3,600F. The airframe and engine require lightweight, high-temperature materials
and structural configurations that can withstand the extreme environment of
hypersonic flight. These include:
► very high temperatures
►heating of the whole vehicle
►steady-state and transient localized heating from shock waves
The combustion temperature for liquid fueled rockets is typically around six
thousand degrees Kelvin. The combustion temperature will be higher if the
reaction releases a higher amount of energy, so a fuel reacting with liquid
oxygen will reach a higher temperature than a fuel reacting with hydrogen
peroxide. The combustion temperature will generally be higher if the exhaust has
a higher molecular weight, if it is high in carbon dioxide for instance. The
reaction of ethanol and hydrogen peroxide will reach a temperature of about
three thousand nine hundred degrees Kelvin. The reaction of quadricyclene and
oxygen react will reach a temperature of about seven thousand eight hundred
degrees Kelvin. (7527 C., 13580.6 F)
A gas turbine is an extension of the same concept. In a gas turbine, a
pressurized gas spins the turbine. In all modern gas turbine engines, the engine
produces its own pressurized gas, and it does this by burning something like
propane, natural gas, kerosene or jet fuel. The heat that comes from burning the
fuel expands air, and the high-speed rush of this hot air spins the turbine. The
rapid expansion of hot air from the exhaust nozzle provides the engine with its
thrust.
A modern turbine engine is extremely efficient, and there is still a lot of
oxygen available in the exhaust stream. The idea behind an afterburner is to
inject fuel directly into the exhaust stream and burn it using this remaining
oxygen. This heats and expands the exhaust gases further. Because they spin at
such high speeds and because of the high operating temperatures, designing and
manufacturing gas turbines is a tough problem from both the engineering and
materials standpoint. Gas turbines also tend to use more fuel when they are
idling. Many of the helicopters you see, a lot of smaller power plants and even
the M-1 Tank use gas turbines. (Most military helicopters use turbines).
In the last two decades, air traffic volume has increased considerably, whereas
the total quantity of fuel consumed has remained almost unchanged. The jet
engine manufacturers strongly contributed towards this by increasing engine
efficiency and power generation. This was achieved by raising the operating
temperatures. The gas temperature varies from 850 to 1100 degrees Celsius. The
temperature of the exhaust gas from the gas turbine is typically in the range of
500°C to 640°C, depending on the design of the gas turbine and the fuel used.
By the year 2050, increased flights by jet airplanes will impact global climate
through the greater number of contrails they will produce, according to a new
study in the July 1 issue of the journal, Geophysical Research Letters.
Contrails are ice clouds created by jet engines and are short lived in dry air,
but can persist for hours in moist air and become indistinguishable from natural
cirrus clouds. Jet aircraft emissions are deposited directly into the upper
atmosphere and some of them have a greater warming effect than gases emitted
closer to the surface, such as automobile exhaust. Carbon dioxide combined with
other exhaust gases and particulates emitted from jet engines could have two to
four times as great an impact on the atmosphere as carbon dioxide emissions
alone. A study performed in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,
when U.S. skies were clear of airplanes, found that contrails have a small but
measurable effect on daily temperatures on Earth. The temperature range was more
than one degree Celsius (about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) larger than when
contrails were present, scientists reported in the journal Nature. Six aircraft
were responsible for the formation of cirrus clouds that covered more than
20,000 square kilometers within an area between Virginia and central
Pennsylvania.
A research team of American and German scientists headed by Patrick Minnis of
the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, reports that contrails
cause a warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, although their impact is currently
small as compared to other greenhouse effects. They predict, however, that it
may grow by a factor of six over the next 50 years. In 1992, for example,
contrails added an estimated 0.02 watts of warming per square meter globally,
about one percent of all manmade greenhouse effects. Air traffic and, therefore,
contrails, are not evenly distributed around the globe. They are concentrated
over parts of the United States and Europe, where local warming reaches up to
0.7 watts per square meter, or 35 times the global average. The resulting
temperature increase is not computed in this study, but is estimated to reach
between 0.01 and 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.02 and 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) over the
northern temperate zones for current air traffic. In the future, increased air
traffic will raise these values.
Number, worldwide, of commercial airline flights which take off every 24 hours
today, according to Boeing: 49,315
There are no statistics for military flights, but I think they’d be fairly busy
right now, don’t you?
Thanks for your marvelous column, which helps keeps the flag of real democracy
flying.
Wal - Australia
Thanks for writing, Wal.
I'm no rocket scientist, but it
sounds as though we're f***ed.
Republican Shenanigans
"President
Bush announced that he would not be burying any more nuclear waste in Nevada.
He said he is looking for a new site in a blue state." -- David Letterman
Study Finds Excess Votes
For Bush In Florida
Daily
Californian, 11-19-04
A group of University of California-Berkeley
researchers released a study yesterday that claimed President Bush may have been
awarded hundreds of thousands of excess votes in Florida.
Rock-The-Voter News
“Kind
of ironic, the only cabinet member whose heart is still in it, Dick Cheney.”
-- Jay Leno
Graphic by Pat Gerber -
San Francisco
Good
News
All Hat No Cattle Call
The Bush regime knows how you voted and where you live
Biz-Tech News
"And Colin
Powell, who caved and made the bogus U.N. case for war. Then, when he wanted to
stay a bit longer to explore Mideast opportunities arising from Arafat's death,
he got shoved out by a president irked by the diplomat's ambivalence and
popularity.
Mr.
Bush prefers more panting enablers, like Alberto Gonzales. You wanna fry
criminals or torture prisoners? Sure thing, boss." – Maureen Dowd,
New York Times columnist
Bush-Prison-Torture News
Bob Witkowski:
Didn't Take Long
Back to the Fifties!
First Stations were toooooooo scared to show 'Saving Private Ryan' uncut on
Veteran's Day. They got no permission from Mikey Powell over at the FCC who had
just fined CBS et al for Janet Jackson's breast fest at last year's Stupid Bowl.
click here
Go-F***-Yourself News
“Boy I tell
you, I watched ‘Extreme Makeover’ today. But enough about the Bush White House.”
-- Jay Leno
“I'm sure
you heard this story. Today, President Bush had his ‘Colin’ removed.” -- Jay
Leno
Odd
News
Swarms of
locusts obscure the Giza pyramids near Cairo on Nov. 17, 2004. The pink
locusts that swept through Cairo recalled the plague of biblical Egypt, flying
high above tall towers and scaring pedestrians who stamped on them or ran for
cover. (Aladin Abdel Naby/Reuters)
Peace
