Author: VD

The Paratrooper of Love emailed me a recommendation yesterday: The Gunner Palace, which is a milblog chronicling some of the challenges, frustrations and absurdities of war. It features, among other things, freestyle rap from Baghdad and a Hendrix goes to Iraq version of the Star-Spangled Banner.

The blog makes for fascinating reading: Over the weeks, a rhythm developed: sleep late to avoid the heat. Try to eat an MRE-anything without pork in it. Drink water, lots of water. Smoke fake Marlboros from the Haji stand and wait for something to happen-anything: a patrol. An escort. An OP. Most of my time was spent talking to the younger soldiers. I enjoyed being with them. For such a violent place, there was a lot of laughter-much of it from a very dark strain of humor…. After seeing this war firsthand, I don’t have any easy answers. In fact, I may have no answers. You try to find good in something like this; you try to find a reason. You try to explain death. I asked soldiers what they thought and their answers were simple. After nearly a year, it wasn’t about Iraq, the Iraqis, democracy, Donald Rumsfeld or oil. It was about them. They just wanted to finish the job they were sent to do so they could go home.

Larry writes:Furthermore, if more recently developed theories of oil formation are correct, and oil is not of biological origin, we may have used only a fraction of the total oil that is available.

I’ve never believed that oil was a byproduct of dead dinosaurs or whatever the common understanding is. For one thing, unless there was a secret dinosaur graveyard to which all dinosaurs in a 1,000 mile radius went to die, the non-random placement of oil fields made no sense. I know literally nothing about the subject, but the usual layman’s notion never made any sense to me.

As you know, I had the benefit of a dinner with Cheney some years ago. He was refreshingly honest about his motivations. With your forebearance, I’ll tell you what he told me:

1. The stability of the US economy is critically dependent upon the ready availability and supply of cheap oil.

2. Within ten years the US will be primarily dependent upon foreign suppliers, the majority of whom are muslim arab nations.

3. One of the major sources of oil is Iraq, which controls 11% of the world’s known economically viable reserves.

4. Hostility to the US had resulted in Iraq contracting its oil extraction to European nations, principally France, Russia and Germany.

5. The US response to these contracts was to impose an embargo on these contracts through the mechanism of the UN.

6. A stalemate ensued between these European nations and the US. (At the time of our dinner we were less than a quarter of the way through the stalemate that would cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children who were starved or denied medical treatment by the UN sanctions and a corrupt Iraqi regime for over ten years).

7. At the time of the first Gulf war, Iraq’s capacity to conduct an offensive strike against its neighbours was eliminated. The coalition flew several thousand subsequent bombing runs over Iraq taking out all possible military targets over the ensuing years without the loss of a single plane to ground fire.

8. And yet the Iraqi intention to sell their oil to the Europeans in Euros remained firm.

9. In order to secure US control of supply, it was envisaged that a sequenceo f military conquests was nece ssary. For some time (in 1993) Russia had been attempting to control Afghanistan. The primary purpose was to secure theregion in order to pipe newly discovered Russian oil across Afghanistan to the (Caspian?) sea. If the US could control Afghanistan, it could control the supply of this Russian oil. (Since the invasion of Afghanistan, it has been realised that the Russian oil is of much inferior quality and less economically accessible than was previously thought – hence the loss of interest in this region since).

10. The next cab off the rank was to be Iraq, followed by Syria and eventually Iran.

11. However, the stumbling block for these excursions remained US public opinion. Cheney was frustrated that the average American would never endorse such a substantial and long term military strategy until there was an oil crisis, by which time it would be too late. In the meantime, the Russians and Europeans would have seized the advantage and there was a real risk theUS would end up having to pay Euro for their oil which would be an economic disaster and end the US dominance of global finances.

12. He remained bitterly disappointed in Bush (Senior) who had squandered the opportunity to unseat Hussein in Gulf War I.

I have stated on numerous occasions that I find the notion of war to defend the imperial dollar more credible than the notion of “blood for oil”. While this is likely only one of several factors, I don’t think that it’s an accident that the Arab countries, as well as some Islamic allies such as Indonesia, have chosen this moment to begin bruiting about the gold dinar.

The Trunk and I were talking the other day about finding opportunities for live-blogging. Tonight I remembered that the finale of the Miss Universe pageant is televised–inspiration struck!

9:14 — Just in time! They all came out in swimsuits. Hard to pick a favorite at this point.

9:16 — Somehow the swimsuits don’t seem to be as big as they used to be.

9:17 — Miss USA just came out. She’s one of the favorites, but somehow doesn’t quite do it for me.

9:18 — Miss Paraguay is clearly a contender.

9:20 — No offense to our Australian friends, but Miss Australia looks as though she’s hoping to pick up some tips along the runway.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I’ve met some lovely sheilas here and there, but they do often seem to have just a touch of the trailer park, if not the prison ship, about them. While Puerto Rico and Colombia offered some serious competition, I would have voted for Miss Estonia.

TH questions my logic: That’s logic? First, the notion that American doesn’t have to pay blood for oil when it can just print money is daft. Printing money at will by America would only make the dollar worthless. Of course, in Mr. Day’s view, paper money is worthless anyway because America has been taken off the gold standard. This completely misses the point that neither green paper nor gold have any inherent value other than what humans place on them. Sure, gold can be made into pretty things and is difficult to find. That wouldn’t matter if people hadn’t already accepted it as a measure of wealth and currency of exchange. As long as paper money is commonly accepted as legal tender for the payment of goods and services, its value relies on the same laws of supply and demand that govern the ‘price’ of gold. Print money at will, and soon people are carting wheelbarrows of cash to buy their daily bread. It wouldn’t be any different if all exchanges were handled in gold coin and the Himalayas were suddenly discovered to have a solid gold core covered by a thin layer of granite.

First, as the financial expert Firestarter points out: “The vast majority of the cost of foreign oil is paid in US government bonds. Essentially an IOU for billions with a coupon (interest) rate of just 1% p.a. Since these bonds can literally be printed by the US government at no immediate cost beyond the coupon rate, oil can essentially be bought for next to nothing. The long term costs of such a policy are price inflation and/or the deflation of the $US, proportional to the value of money supply “created” by such a policy. We have already seen the devaluation of the US$ by some 35% and the escalation of asset values world-wide as a consequence.”

Following on to this, I note that the Fed created $48 billion last week, which is enough to pay cash for 1.12 billion barrels of oil at $42.50/barrel, significantly more than the 70 million barrels we use every week. Since January 20, 2004, the M3 money stock has increased by 3.3 percent to $9.1 trillion. That’s $300 billion dollars printed in four months.

In other words, the situation is precisely as I described it. Unsurprisingly, TH went on to try arguing that the 10 billion barrels in ANWR will only allow the US to go without importing oil for 2.5 years, of course, he ignores the tiny little fact that the whole point is to allow us to go without importing any ARAB oil, which drilling in ANWR would let us do for around 15 years, 30 if we were content to reduce our Arab imports by half.

So, thank you, TH, for underlining my point about the ignorance of American left-liberals.

DY writes: “Spiting Their Pretty Faces”. I agree with you 100%. Keep up the excellent work. We need more men like you….. I’ve always argued that today’s women are unrealistic in their criteria for men. The problem isn’t a shortage of good men (as Oprah preaches), but today’s women’s failure to recognize good men and give them a shot. Like your article points out, most intelligent men avoid today’s feminist-indoctrinated women like the Black death of the middle ages.

Have you noticed Hollywood’s latest obsession. It’s the older woman/younger man relationship. Case in point, Demi Moore/Aston Kirchner. Talk shows, women’s magazines, and websites flaunt it with the usual in your face so popular with feminists…. Here’s something I’ve noticed more and more as I’m out and about:

1. Older women dressing like kids. They look ridiculous.

2. Older women trying to pick up much younger men. I’ve talked to 20-something guys being hit on by women in their 40s-50s.

3. Mother/daughter tag teams. The 20 something daughter lures men to their table then pawns them of on her middle age mother.

I tend to agree with this, as I’m frequently astonished by the failure of many women to appreciate the countless good qualities of the Perfect Aryan Male, who is a gentleman, wealthy and intelligent to boot. He has told me several times of being aggressively hit on by women 10 to 15 years older, towards whom he has never sent the slightest signal of interest. I think this smacks of a sad desperation, more to be pitied than mocked, except that they are being held out as role models for the 20- and 30-something crowds, some of whom appear to be headed for precisely the same fate.

The first time around, it’s tragedy. The second, it’s just farce.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that a number of the women of my acquaintance who married in their late-20s and early 30s married men of superficially lower quality than the men they were dating, (and in many cases rejecting), in previous years. This isn’t uniformly true, and my memories are too hazy to make a strong assertion in this regard, but that’s the general impression I have.

“Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, ‘Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here.’ “At that point, a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt,” NewsMax reported. “Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, ‘Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam.’ “Just then, Kerry — in front of the schoolchildren, other visitors and Secret Service agents — brazenly ‘flashed the bird’ at Sampley….

Sure, the networks would have spiked it, but you can’t tell me that wouldn’t have led on Drudge. The more I see of Kerry, the more I am convinced that he’s an unlikeable jerk. I wonder if they’ll even let him speak at the Democratic convention.

Eclipsed by the furor over foreign policy, Congress’ debate over the federal budget has slipped quietly into an impasse that is no garden-variety partisan standoff. It is a battle among Republicans over what their party stands for, analysts say. At issue is whether this year’s budget should put the brakes on the tax-cut drive that has been a hallmark of the Bush presidency, and instead put more muscle behind an old GOP orthodoxy: reducing the deficit.

The dispute has kept Congress from completing one of its most basic annual functions: writing a budget to guide the year’s tax and spending decisions. And it has opened an unusually bitter and personal dispute among prominent Republicans. A small but powerful faction of Senate Republicans is insisting that the fiscal 2005 budget include rules that require any future tax cuts to be offset so their effect on the deficit would be neutralized; that would mean either cutting spending or raising taxes in other areas. The proposal would strike at the core of President Bush’s domestic agenda if he is reelected by making it much more difficult to cut taxes.

But House Republican leaders have vehemently opposed the pay-as-you-go requirement as an affront to their party’s credo that, when it comes to taxes, the lower the better. They have kept the requirement out of the budget resolution passed by the House — and have openly questioned the loyalty of Republicans who disagree. “It is a fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party: Is it a party about deficit reduction or a party about tax cuts?” said Stanley Collender, a budget expert at Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington.

Let’s see… cut taxes or reduce the deficit. Gee, why not simply cut spending and do both?

A pizza deliveryman won’t face charges for fatally shooting a would-be robber several times when he was approached in a high-crime area, but his employer, Pizza Hut, has fired him for violating a company policy against carrying firearms. Ronald B. Honeycutt, 38, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, says he’s been delivering pizzas for 20 years and has always packed heat on the job. “It’s a clear case of self-defense,” Deputy Prosecutor Barb Crawford said. “He did what the law allows him to do to protect himself.”Jerome Brown-Dancler approached Honeycutt at around 11 p.m. on May 17 just after he had made a pizza delivery in Indianapolis. According to the report, Brown-Dancler pointed a 9 mm handgun at the Pizza Hut employee as he was entering his van.

Brown-Dancler’s gun carried a loaded 14-round clip but had no bullet in the chamber, Crawford told the Star. When confronted, Honeycutt pulled his own 9 mm from the back of his pants and fired until it was empty. He says he fired 15 times in about eight seconds. An autopsy revealed Brown-Dancler was hit at least 10 times.

If Pizza Hut will not recognize the single most important American right, I suggest that Americans refuse to patronize their pizza. I’m quite happy to make do with Domino’s.

I’m not planning on doing a daily Vox Tox or anything – once a week is most likely – but I didn’t think the Libertarian nomination should pass without comment. I also had some interesting email that called for addressing and I wanted to see if using a different recording method might help a bit.

For those who are interested, I’m using an Open Source recording program called Audacity. I record with that, run the Amplify effect on my voice, then paste the music into the beginning, middle and end. I then export it as an MP3. Unfortunately, the program gives me no control over whether the MP3 is exported at 128, 96 or 64. I did try exporting it as an .OGG, but that reduced the size of the 17 meg file by less than one meg.

Anyhow, let me know if you think the quality is better or worse than last time. I also had an idea… there’s a number of different bloggers out there audioblogging, and someone with more time to devote to this than me could pull them together, do a little mixing and stream them using Pirate Radio.