Finally implemented MT-Blacklist this morning and it was so easy I wonder why I waited so long. Jay Allen rocks!
Now I need to find a replacement for Outlook 2003, which is annoying the hell out of me. Any suggestions for a good Windows-based PIM/email client?
Blogging has been more irregular this past week.
Comment spam has been getting worse and worse, and fighting it has been siphoning off blogging time (I may not be able to wait for MT 3.1 to come out after all). New kitten to love and play with. Plus, I’m having a little of a crisis in confidence – it feels like anything I want to talk about, other bloggers have already addressed, and said it better than I could myself.
I guess you could say I’m in a bit of a rut. Hopefully I’ll pull out soon.
Even a new kitten high can only last so long. It’s back to reality today. Not only is the Marine Corps cutting its training time for soldiers,
The exercise, called a CAX in Marine lingo, has been shortened from 23 to 11 days, Col. Blake Crowe, operations officer for the Marine Corps Training Command at Quantico, Va., said in an interview.
This was done, Crowe said, to “get more battalions through” in a shorter period of time. Until now, the Marine Corps trained 10 battalions in CAX every six months. Under the accelerated schedule, it will train eight battalions in two months.
but the trainees don’t even get to actually fire some of the weapons they’ve been trained on due to lack of funding.
Staff Sgt. Don Allen, a combat instructor, said his trainees watch demonstrations of the M203 grenade launcher, the Squad Automatic Weapon and the .50-caliber machine gun, but not everyone gets to actually fire the weapons.
“It’s financial,” said Allen, a combat engineer who fought in Iraq last year with the 8th Marines. “I wish I had the money for them to shoot actual rounds. When I went through this training in 1995, we all shot every weapon.”
Where the hell is all the money going?
We’re please to announce that a new kitten has come to join the household – meet our new baby GIMLI:
As a volunteer, you see literally hundreds of kittens at the SPCA during kitten season. Some stick in your heart more than others, and for whatever reason Gimli caught at mine. After seeing him go without a home for 2+ months, Scott and I decided ours was the right home for him. We brought him home today.
Gimli is an active, high-energy kitty, currently about 5 months old. He was very much in need of space to run around and play in, and being locked up with so little play room was taking a toll on him. He also had a really nasty cold for several weeks which didn’t help his adoption chances. Despite it all, though, he purrs like a jackhammer the minute anyone picks him up. I had thought that when the time came for a new kitten we’d probably get a tortie, but nope! Our boy is almost entirely black except for a patch of white on his belly and the tips of his paws.
Gimli (yes, named after the Dwarf in Lord of the Rings) was the name he was assigned at the shelter. After calling him that for 2 months, I can’t think of him as anything other than Gimli, so we’re going to keep it. It might not have been the name we would have chosen but it’s good enough.
The resident kitties are still trying to decide what to make of the newcomer. More pix are posted in the Gallery.
More to follow as he settles in, I’m sure.
Feeling a little paranoid this morning? Well if you like intrigue here’s one for you.
The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorize $500 million for building a network of friendly militias around the world
Ostensibly this would allow the US to pay militia type forces to bring about law and order in “ungoverned” areas of the world (funny, I thought it was pretty much settled who got to govern just about all of the planet by now).
Of course, that leaves open the issue of whether said militias would have to even pretend to follow the Geneva Conventions or any other laws. Not that the US has been all too good at it, but this would be taking another page from the Nixon playbook – plausible deniability. “We were funding them, but no, we had no idea what they were going to do with those finds!” Political assassinations not legal? Leave it to the Militias!
Think I’m kidding?
In his testimony, Wolfowitz also suggested expanding the scope of the war on terror by including into the list of its possible targets radical Islamic clerics, who, in his words, provide “ideological sanctuary” to terrorism.
Hat tip to Larry for the link.
The New Republic thinks Kerry should sue the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” for libel.
That is why if Bush should lose this November, there won’t be any honeymoon for Kerry His first few months in office will look like the last years of the Clinton presidency: congressional inquiries, constant talk radio trash-talking, and book deals for anyone with a charge to make. Simply, Kerry can’t afford to let the SBVT charges go unanswered if he wants to govern effectively.
I agree completely but I also think it’s not going to happen.