Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke

No rib, link to story Here

I got your Dak Bulgogi right here

I spent Thanksgiving with some friends, including the two above. For a number of years I had cooked for a group of professionals at a TV station. The idea of re-booting the dinner to reflect a busy upscale lifestyle was in the air. Thanksgiving was shortened to turkey day, then t-day. I'm all in favor of fine dining and stretching the envelope, but Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks. T-day and Black Friday precurser sales don't quite transmit that idea properly. As for the two kids, where the heck do they get all that energy? I discovered that being a human jungle gym has its attractions. (the sudden calm during their nap was pretty good too)

On to the link-dump. First is an article about the party system. Others are weighing in and I've seen some advertising regarding a centrist party. We'll see. I, like most people, think Government has shed its governing function and is acting like a business, i.e. we work for it. If fear sells, sell it. If infantile posturing gets you air time ... and so forth.

• Hyper-Polarized Party System: Still, the unending high-decibel partisan warfare of the past decade has led many Americans to look back with nostalgia on the more consensual, if muddled, party system that persisted until the 1970s.

Followed by two links that call into question the congress critters disconnect from daily life.

• A Message from the Voters: (pdf): A 53% majority of registered voters also think that those who came into power
  campaigning on Obamacare repeal should decline their federal health plan, and only a third think they should accept it. Many Democrats have been pushing Republicans to deny their benefits, but among all voters, the pressure is actually by far stronger with Republicans and independents than with Democrats.
• Where's Mine: Harris, who defeated Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) earlier this month, drew unwelcome attention last week when Politico reported that he complained at an orientation session for new lawmakers upon finding out that his government-provided health care coverage would not take effect until February, a month after he takes office.

The next two are about banks. I'm tempted to mutter something about the power behind the throne, but writing the obvious takes too much time.

• The Best Congress Money Can Buy: ...the financial sector has paid little for bringing the world to near-collapse or for receiving the taxpayers’ bailout that was denied to most small-enough-to-fail Americans. The sector still rakes in more than a fourth of American business profits, up from a seventh 25 years ago.
• What Good is Wall Street?: A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.” This seemed akin to, say, saluting BP for services to the environment or praising Facebook for its commitment to privacy.

Oh Lordy. Korea. We're gonna win this one by golly. Mess with us and we'll borrow some money and fix your kim chee. Yeah boy, you be gettin' a stern rebuke when we done with you.

• The Tyranny of Metaphor: In the midst of the Korean War, Brogan was not only commenting on Americans' frustration with their inability to prevail decisively against supposedly inferior Chinese and North Korean forces, but also cautioning against other misadventures in which the United States falsely assumed its superpower status assured a military victory in any conflict it chose to fight. Brogan could just as easily have titled his essay The Omnipotence of American Illusion in an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of true believers. Convictions, the great German philosopher wrote, are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
• Why Are We Still In Korea?: We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War? Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the "Asian tigers," a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North.
• Lunacy His Principal Export: These events may also ultimately be seen as wins for Kim on two other levels. First, the nuclear facility almost certainly required international collaboration. If it turns out that support came in part from, say, Pakistan, already suspected of helping the Koreans develop a nuclear ballistic missile capability, it would be deeply embarrassing and awkward for the United States.
• Stuxnet and N. Korea: While U.S. officials are trying to figure out how to respond to North Korea’s unveiling of a new uranium enrichment plant, there are clues that a piece of malware believed to have hit Iran’s nuclear efforts could also target the centrifuges Pyongyang’s preparing to spin.

And meanwhile we're clearly and decisively taking care of our other loose ends.

• How to Schedule a War: Going, going, gone! You can almost hear the announcer’s voice throbbing with excitement, only we’re not talking about home runs here, but about the disappearing date on which, for the United States and its military, the Afghan War will officially end.

Diplomatic Frolics

Another WikiLeak dump. The president is on damage control again. The fear industry is howling. Between the somebody is trying to ban Christmas stories and the war with Korea / Iran bonanza, they can pretty much coast the rest of the week. The leaks do raise some questions, however. By this I mean the cables themselves, not the fragmented excerpts getting play. You'll need an extra big cup of coffee and a scroll wheel to deal with the current batch.

• Traitors - Incalculable Damage- Full Might of the Law: one might be tempted to comment, "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." But that would sound as sad as when the government tells it to you. Instead I'll call on my current hobbyhorse and note that the powers that be don't seem to be too pleased by their public pat-down and x-ray. (why yes, I can still spell schadenfreude with the help of my Webster's)
• Secret Stuff: It doesn’t matter how robust your encryption is if you leave plaintext copies around for every Junior Officer, Congressional hopeful, and janitor with some spare time to read. And don’t store them in one place with sequential call numbers. WikiLeaks isn’t some super duper spy org, it’s just a vacuum cleaner that sucks up information that was pretty much in plain sight. The real spy organizations: Israel, England, Russia, China, Liechtenstein, probably had a copy a minute after the cable was sent. No foreign country was really shocked or taken by surprise. The secrecy rubric really refers to the taxpayers.
• Embarrassing Revelations: If you read some of these cables, you would suspect they were written by frat boys on Facebook. Pedigreed ivy league frat boys mind you, but... Some things don’t belong in a diplomatic cable. An awful lot of embarrassment could be avoided if an adult explained to the wonderkinder that they’re on the job, not at a swell party texting their buddy.
• Other countries will question if we can keep a secret: Uh ....yeah! Well, can we? So instead of whining about one guy from Belgium or Private somebody or another, we might want to consider putting the house in order. If following security protocol or setting aside those little side deals discommodes some of the more entitled members of the foreign service, tough.
• The other Arab countries want us to invade Iran: For a definition of getting played refer to our Talaban Commander that turned into a shopkeeper several million dollars later. But they agree with Israel. Sure, as long as we pony up the money and shed the blood, what the heck.

The sad part was contained in a British Minister's comment. He said the lone superpower came off like someone wandering the world and wondering why no one would do as bidden. Coming up next, WikiLeaks on banks.

Thanks Ever So

While I know pointing out other's faux pas is a two way street, it's generally not a good idea to wear slogans on your butt.

Via: Miss Cellania

Happy Thanksgiving

For Your Safety

Picture Link

I'm just going to mumble something about the TSA and let you fill in the blank any way you wish.

Thanksgiving Week

What a week. TSA feeling up 5 year olds at the airport, while very important congress-critters and their posse slip in the side gate. A shopkeeper in Afghanistan managed to run off with a chunk of American taxpayer's money. With his proven ability to extract profitability, I'll bet that Wall Street head-hunters are looking for his number. April is when the debt ceiling has to be raised or maintained. Some of our new critters have announced an eminent Government shutdown. I feel very safe in predicting that neither their paycheck nor the IRS will be effected. First things first, after all. President Obama took a trip to Asia and the G-20 meeting. One country went so far as to suggest that they would put the needs of their own people before America's Strategic Interests. Great googly moogly!! A world where people tended to their own business - unacceptable. We might be forced to grow our own food and sew our own clothes or make something for trade. (beside debt tranches) I seem to remember something the Greeks were muttering about hubris, or was it Gods, punishment and TV, or maybe cynicism being way too easy. The dumping of links begins.

• Musharraf attempts a comeback: There are certainly countries that promote men like Musharraf, and it's possible he could mount a political comeback - but so few are able to apply authoritarianism correctly, if there is such a thing. If Musharraf has no plans to push back against these internal forces, his usefulness to America seems minor at best.
• Congress Erodes National Security: Congress has also experienced a declining pool of expertise in important foreign policy areas such as arms control, and it remains ill-equipped to prepare the country for coping with the many overlapping foreign policy challenges wrought by globalization, King says. She urges leaders of the new Congress to return to rules of order and emulate some of the ways the executive branch is taking on the cross-jurisdictional challenges, especially the State Department and Defense Department.
• Rising East, Setting West: Add to this the peculiar obsessions of the Washington power elite, with regard to Iran for instance, and you have an unpalatable mix. These all-American fixations are viewed as an inconvenience or worse in Asia, where powerful regional hegemons are increasingly determined to chart their own courses, even if in public they continue to humor a somewhat addled and infirm Uncle Sam.
• Congress Should Defend My Junk: If, on the other hand, Issa were to launch an investigation of TSA, he'd instantly win the media stardom he longs for and would probably win over a good many independents and Democrats (and Atlantic staffers). Think about it: he could call as witnesses some poor 5-year-old kid who got felt up and the kid's furious mom.

The next three are about reducing the Pentagon budget. I'm not sure why I include them, no-one has any real intention of actually doing it. We can't be soft on **place current boogie here**.

• Defense on a Diet: Such agreement is easy enough to find among think-tank academics, especially those employed by institutions that specifically advocate limited government or scrutinize the military-industrial complex. But there’s far less appetite for it on Capitol Hill, especially among the Republican congressmen currently beating their chests about excessive government spending—though Democrats are seldom much better.
• Defending Europe: Europe is not under threat from any nation state that its own armed forces could not dispatch. What's more, it's not clear why Brzezinski is so dismissive about the costs of these garrisons. The U.S. Army was already in the process of consolidating its European bases and drawing down brigades - a process that the Obama administration has halted, at a cost of billions of dollars to the taxpayer.
• Defense Cuts: The idea that we need a defense budget almost 60 percent larger as a share of GDP than a decade ago is ludicrous. While it is true that the wars initiated by George W. Bush and a Republican Congress will impose a financial burden on American taxpayers for many years to come, that isn’t enough to justify spending more than half of the world’s military expenditures. Almost all our NATO allies get by spending well less than half what we spend as a share of GDP.

The last three are a bit of history. The Glen Beck one isn't so much about the gloryhound himself, that's low hanging cherries, but more about how simple sending up a smokescreen to go with those gilt mirrors really is.

• Glen Beck's Myths: Certainly there are features of Progressivism that anyone concerned about centralized power has every right to criticize. But there are problems with how Beck frames his critique. There were different types of Progressives who stressed diverse themes, not all of which can be subsumed under the rubric of “big government.” The connection between Progressivism and modern liberalism is weak.
• Eurasian Time: His current work broadens the canvas by looking at broad temporal patterns of consolidation and turmoil across the full expanse of Eurasia, including Russia, France, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia.
• Ghandi's Invisible Hands: Ever since reading Unto This Last, John Ruskin’s 1877 paean to the dignity of manual labor, in South Africa, Gandhi had had a credo to match his Victorian attitude of industriousness. Accordingly, he transformed his ashram into a workshop where each member engaged in substantial amounts of communal service, from working in the community’s kitchen to teaching in the ashram school to cleaning the shared latrines.