Hello all. My science group has been in McMurdo for two days and we are making quick progress at getting our cargo in shape to send to the field. The weather in McMurdo was too poor for flying most of last week and by Saturday, when we all flew (by C-17), there were 100+ people backed up in Christchurch, NZ, waiting for a flight. Not the worst place to be stuck but we were all anxious to be on our way.
In any case, we are here now. Our first job has been to assemble, sort and pack our camping gear, food, science cargo, sleds, radios, and so on. Snowmobiles and fuel must also be arranged. The support staff here in McMurdo does some parts of this for each science group, based on a plan submitted months ago, they arrive. Tomorrow the new folks in our group go off on a two-day survival school while returning folks have a morning refresher course. We'll have a snowmobile mechanics class at some point too. If we can get everything "into the system" by Thursday, we should be good to fly (by Twin Otter) on Saturday.
Posted by Christina at November 12, 2007 12:29 AMAnother senseless shooting, another dead Iraqi. Bush has brought the Old West to Iraq along with his freedom and Democracy.
BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 — An Iraqi taxi driver was shot and killed on Saturday by a guard with DynCorp International, a private security company hired to protect American diplomats here, when a DynCorp convoy rolled past a knot of traffic on an exit ramp in Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday.
“They just killed a man and drove away,” Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman.
New York Times
Posted by Judith at November 12, 2007 01:12 AMOh, and the Iraqi Government want all amunities for private security firms cancelled immediately.
Posted by Judith at November 12, 2007 01:16 AMI know this is old, but I ran across it once again. Enjoy the stuff idiots 'is' made of:
George Bush's Poetic Strategery.
"Make the Pie Higher"
I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/george-bushs-poetic-stra_b_71986.html
Tomgram: Susan Faludi, Hillary Clinton and the Rescue Card (Interesting article over at tomdispatch.com)
Whatever fears Americans have at the moment -- and with oil heading to $100-a-barrel and the housing market in freefall, fears are not unreasonable -- they do not add up to Fear with a capital "F," as in the days and weeks after the attacks of September 11, 2001. They do not add up to the kind of abject fear that proved so useful to the Bush administration as it prepared to launch its Global War on Terror and future invasion of Iraq by scaring Americans into passivity.
When al-Qaeda played the terror card and the Bush administration cunningly responded with the "rescue" card, it took Americans deep into their cultural past, right back to the earliest seventeenth-century bestsellers (captivity narratives of young women taken by Indian raiders on the "frontier" of New England) as well as into a more recent past of cowboy rescuers, the sort who saved helpless young women in the darkened movie theaters of George's and my own childhoods. Playing that rescue card was, as Todd Gitlin wrote recently at Truthdig.org, the "second hijacking" of 9/11. It took Americans from a confrontation with real enemies into a fantasy world that called up the most stereotypical roles in our gender dictionary. ("Welcome to war against an Axis of Injuns to protect the honor of the wimmenfolk.") It is an amazing, if thoroughly chilling, tale that we are not yet done with.
Posted by Judith at November 12, 2007 02:38 AMChristina, thanks for the update. What a great idea to have survival training and snowmobile maintenance, too. Makes total sense when you think about it.
Posted by iamcoyote at November 12, 2007 05:19 AMWent to my local pub last night and the bartender was complaining about how prices (especially gas) were going up.
The ReThugs had better pray to their god Mammon that there isn't a recession before the election.
Posted by gay veteran at November 12, 2007 05:25 AMYes, thanks Christina. Keep us posted.
Posted by Judith at November 12, 2007 05:38 AMJudith thanks so much for the trip into the recent past with "Make the pie higher". I had forgtten it.
God, how I laughed at that, in those days when one could still laugh.
Posted by euzoius at November 12, 2007 06:56 AMThe dollar is in trouble because the Fed creates too many of them. How hard is that to understand?
Posted by skeptic at November 12, 2007 07:16 AMJudith, Thanks for poetic reference.
Here's what bu$h said the other day about Musharraf:
You can't be the President and the head of the military at the same time.
Hate to say it, but I've so missed our little Muckdog (sorry not going to link to him.. you can find it easily if so inclined). His economic view is always better than the "glass is half full" no no that is only for optimistic haters like us who want the America to fail...no no, he is the "glass is ALWAYS full" kinda guy.
Anyway, he linked to an article claming with much enthusiasm that the dollar's decline is absolutely nothing to worry about. It is simply an indicator of the true health of the world:
"Instead, it reflects other countries finding confidence in their own currencies, and weaning themselves of excessive dependence on the dollar as the only international currency for their savings and transactions."
I just had to laugh. While certainly a degree of truth, the spin is really, really entertaining.
Posted by Simp at November 12, 2007 09:20 AMYes, SoS, I saw Bush saying that the other day, and couldn't believe they showed it on teevee, it makes him look like such a shmuck. It reminded me of the nasty "Mission Accomplished" picture with PrezCodpiece.
*shudder*
Sharon, What made me laugh was that it's quoted from the official White House press release site. What an embarrassment!
Posted by Seven of Six at November 12, 2007 11:24 AMThe dollar has been in trouble for a long time, glad the markets finally noticed. Now, maybe we can get our economy back. Shipping dollars overseas was never going to work for long.
Posted by uptown at November 12, 2007 04:19 PMLet's not forget that the Euro traded at $1.18 in Jan 1999 before falling to $0.86 in 2002, just as it was put in circulation. Of course now we notice since it's in the $1.45 range.
Posted by uptown at November 12, 2007 04:55 PM